Conceptions of the Self
by ChangeIsJustifiable
Summary: 07 - Sore throats, nightmares, and the differences between organics and Cybertronians - something is terribly wrong with Sam. To live is to evolve, and shape alone is not enough. Think of it as a mutual learning experience. Bot!Sam Bee/Sam
1. The Aftermath

**- Conceptions of the Self -**  
By: ChangeisJustifiable, aka Meicailya  
**Disclaimer:** I do not own Transformers, or the 07/09 movies, or any variation thereof, nor is any profit being made (except the profit which is my own inflated ego). Liberties have been taken with the common laws of physics, culture, language, history, and all that good stuff._ Not entirely compatible with RotF_. Like. At all.  
**Warnings:** Cybertronian!Sam, mech on mech romance, badly written action sequences, and Prick!Prime. Whoo.  
**Genre**: Angst and crack and angst. No really.

* * *

**Chapter One: Home Again  
**"I _want_," he said -- softly, as to avoid agitating his throat ... but the tone still scrapped and grated like broken glass or twisting metal -- "to see my _car_."

-+-

_Entry Word__: human  
__Function__: adjective  
__Text__: relating to or characteristic of human beings. "It's human nature to care about what people think of us"  
__Synonyms__: mortal, natural  
__Near Antonyms__: angelic (or angelical), divine, godlike, superhuman, supernatural; immortal, omnipotent, omniscient; animal, beastly, bestial, brute; inhuman, _**rOBotiC  
**Antonyms: **NONHUMAN  
**.

robotic

nonhuman  
.

(_What did it mean?_)  
In a relatively short amount of time, words took on an entirely new _meaning_. Or a lack thereof. Take, for instance, the inquiry of well being -- 'Are you okay?'. It didn't really _mean_ anything ... it was all just noises arranged in a certain pattern that people assigned a meaning. It wasn't the ... noise made that was important -- it was the _quality_ of that sound. Because as stupid as it was, killing an evil genocidal wannabe-dictator alien robot from outer space did not come with an 'escape detection by the government free' card. Emitting alien radiation identical to the All Spark? Well, it didn't seem to help his case, either.

So, words. Words were just ... nonsense, really. Words and _tone_ could change the entire meaning, and people were fools if they didn't know it. High school, after all, taught them everything about _tone_. Who doesn't get that reprimand from _some_ authority figure: 'Don't take that tone with me!'? And wasn't every teenager super sensitive to the tones of his peers, to know how well received he was?

Case in point --

A young government official, perhaps late twenty's or early thirties, faced the three of them and gushed. He'd been gushing for a while now, and basically all of it could be summed up as: "We're so sorry, Mr. and Mrs. Witwicky."

Sam had to hand it to the government. The guy had genuine blue eyes, and hair that could have been brown, but was inky black and neatly combed and wet with water, or gel. He had a very American face with a slight flavor of farm boy good manners and courtesy. Hell, he could have been Clark Kent, he was so wholesome. Parents dig that kind of stuff, right? Right. Hey, his parents probably grew up on Clark Kent, and so much the better, eh?

Then again, the Witwicky family? Always had been a little weird. Ron, for example, started blustering the moment the first apology had left the official's mouth, since that was what Ron did when he was bewildered and at a loss. Judy, on the other hand, was stiffly and silently furious, though Sam had the feeling that she might soon attempt to turn a piece of furniture into a weapon and hit someone. Seeing as how they had been kidnapped out of their homes late one night, slightly drunk, held captive, and then learned that their son had been held separately for even longer than they had ... they were understandably very angry parents.

Sam, on the other hand, had been through the emotional wringer this week, and didn't feel much of anything. Well, that wasn't _exactly_ true ... he was sure he felt at least a little furious, right now, but mostly he felt tired and distrustful. Not of the official, of course -- just, generally. It -- just ... he was just ... he didn't trust that it was over. He'd thought it was over once, and it hadn't been, so now ... he just couldn't believe it. No amount of medical attention, hot showers, or new clothes could change that (maybe especially because they were exact replicas to those he'd been wearing during Mission City, though not _those_ since he'd seen them cut up and analyzed and destroyed for _science_ -- and he didn't particularly care to ask where or why or how they'd found the ones he was wearing now)

His body was still tight and stiff with agony, and he felt exhausted and out of place (out of joint, out of _rhythm_, _out of this world and __**alien**__ like the real ones outside this very building_), and he seriously doubted that he'd ever reach the point that he'd be unwary every again, feeling the scratch of the bandages under his clothing (binding him together like pieces of shattered ceramic bowls and so much glue and tape).

Enough -- just. Enough. His racing thoughts were leading to uncomfortable places (_the feel of cold hands invasive scans _) so he just ... stopped. Made himself feel the painful stretch and binding of his ribs as he breathed. After all, one doesn't get thrown around onto cars or caught by metal hands from heights and remain unscathed.

Around the fourth time the young bureaucrat said that the government was oh-so-blessedly _sorry_ that their rights had been trampled, Sam decided that he'd heard enough and that they might as well get something useful done. He broke in over his father's newest round of blustering, and asked for something very simple. It was something he'd been asking after for a while now, and he was becoming tired of repeating him. He looked directly into Clark-Kent-blue eyes, and said: "I want to see my car."

Of course, he had a throat so sore it was an agony to talk, and he was tired and wary so he wasn't blinking much -- so it came out less as a request and more as a demand, and it sounded _hard_ and _unforgiving_ the way a soldier's would (or a _killer's_, and hadn't they said he was both?). And that was when Sam discovered that he was very okay with making demands right now.

(What was so _fucking_ difficult about letting him have his car, dammit? What was _so fucking difficult to understand about him wanting his car back?!_)

"Of course," the bureaucrat said, the supposedly genuine worry and regret crystallizing on his face and crackling like plastic. The _tone_ was fluorescent (_too _bright and fake and _cold_) as he echoed: "Your -- car."

It took Sam a split second to realize that his loose hands had twitched, even as his straight stare tightened into a strange focus -- maybe he was just sick and tired of being sick and tired, but it was the same kind of singular attention he had paid Megatron, right before he shoved the All Spark into the molten hole in his chest. "I _want_," he said -- softly, as to avoid agitating his throat ... but the tone still scrapped and grated like broken glass or twisting metal -- "to see my _car_." There wasn't quite a need to finish the sentence with '_try to stop me, I fucking __**dare**__ you_', as it was understood.

It had been a long week for Sam -- a long week with no Mikaela and no Bumblebee and no Autobots at all, and -- well, that wasn't completely true. He'd been in contact with Bumblebee through a phone, texting back and forth with the mutual understanding that Bumblebee's vocalizer was still a little messed up and Sam's throat was raw enough to make him sound like that guy who'd been smoking since he was twelve. It _was_ Bumblebee's job to look after Sam, after all -- even if it was a job he had asked to do. Like Sam would argue with giant alien robots with cannons? Well, he wouldn't have said _no_ even if they weren't so threatening -- first of all, that was his _car_, and he had worked hard and put honest money out on it (okay, maybe not so honest, but how was a teenaged boy supposed to get that kind of money so fast?), and secondly ... there was a five year old gibbering in glee over his very own alien, and a teenaged boy gibbering in glee over his very own super advanced robot.

But it had been a long week, and Sam had little else to do but to think and look ahead and _think_ about what was to come. It was -- well, just a week and a half ago, his biggest concern was his plans to get The Girl. And -- um, wow. Aliens. Robot aliens, and intergalactic wars, and the All Spark (that was _gone_). And, well ... it would take some getting used to, having a robot pretending to be a Camaro sitting in his front yard. It would ... well, robot aliens. That _was_ awesome. On the other hand ... robot aliens. _Aliens_. As in ... yanno, _not human_. Their minds wouldn't work like his did, and while his nightmares knew the difference between Autobot and Decepticon, his waking mind might not be so ready. (And it hardly helped that the government had tried to get him a psychiatrist until he was resistant to the idea ... if resistant meant punching the sunnava for implying the Autobots weren't friendly. If resistant meant nearly getting violent with the next one for implying he punched the first because _Sam_ was worried the Autobots weren't the 'good guys'.)

It had been a long week, but Sam had settled into a sort of numb haze just to get by -- until then, until he was staring at this sunnava bureaucrat who was clearly one of those idiots who didn't understand that the Autobots were more than just _machines_, that there was an intelligence to them. His twitching fingers jerked and clenched into a fist as he stared at the man, and his bruised bones and fractured ribs grated against one another, and Sam thought: _Just give me a reason._ The tape stretched across his blistered knuckles pulled painfully, and --

The bureaucrat looked away. "This way, please."

and Sam was numb again.

-+-

_How are you? Are you okay? Are you okay, Sam? How are you feeling?_

He was sick of hearing the same question over and over again, and it was getting to the point that he was going to start being honest, to look at them and say: _no. No, I'm not okay. Deal with it. _

His mother's heels and the bureaucrat's hard soled shoes click-clacked against the linoleum floor and the harsh fluorescent lighting overhead glared with sickly belligerence, and it gave Sam flashbacks to horror movies with scenes in hospitals. Then the comparison broke there, because they hadn't gone far enough to turn a corner when Mikaela appeared before them, with her own 'genuine American' government employed guide. It only took the two of them long enough to recognize each other, both obviously still a little disoriented and feeling unreal, to react with enthusiasm.

"Sam!"

For the first time in what seemed like forever, he felt a smile appear on his face. It felt wrong and awful and not the kind of smile that he'd like to give Mikaela, but it was a smile that he meant anyway, and she rushed him, and gripped him so tightly that his vision went black briefly and his ears rang, but he couldn't exactly protest -- it felt too much like she was grasping him like he had grasped that statue on top of the roof, and he wanted that sort of contact with a ravenous fervor that made him weak in the knees. (Or maybe that was the pain, the brittle snap-crackle of that delicate bone cage around his lungs and heart --)

So he hooked his arms around her shoulders and leaned against her as she leaned against him (and together they might hold up the world, the two of them), and it felt _so_ good to have some _simple human touch again_. It was warm and soft and solid and _reassuring_ after nearly a week of only seeing strangers and having nightmares and having been through a battle. It was so soothing, so relaxing, so sweet and _undemanding _that it made up for all the discomfort of cuts and bruised muscles and bruised bones and fractured ribs. It was _such_ a relief to touch another human who had been there from the beginning, who knew everything and had _been_ there and fought, too.

(She would never ask him what was wrong because what was wrong with him was wrong with her, too.)

"What have you been up to?" he asked, because he didn't want to ask her the same stupid question they'd been asking him for days. It was a little like waking up -- he'd made some sort of note of how bad his voice sounded, but it was only now, trying to speak with Mikaela, that he realized that he sounded like he'd been deathly ill for weeks. It was hardly surprising, though, right? He'd inhaled so much dust and debris that germs could build a miniature New York in his lungs if they got it into their head ... or whatever germs used to think with. If they thought. Hell, if there were 'autonomous robotic organisms', why couldn't germs think?

"Oh, you know," she sighed, "hanging out with aliens. The usual." She sounded so relieved, and he heard the silent _'I'm fine -- now that you're here and you understand and you're not going to ask questions and oh: this is nice'_. Finally, she relaxed her arms and it was a new agony again, but he let her draw back. Still, neither of them could quite let go because they were still too busy trying to steady the tremors of relief and blissful understanding. "You?"

"Being kidnapped by secret organizations and having people doubt my sanity -- you know," he rasped, "the usual."

The moment stretched crystalline and glassy sharp, neither breathing as if the slightest movement would break it and they would be sliced to ribbons. Then Mikaela said, "Ah. Well, would you like to do something a little _less_ usual, then?"

"Sure," he said dryly, "I'd like to see my car."

As if that explained it. As if it explained everything going on inside him. But it was a driving demand, like something terrible would happen if he didn't.

She looked up at him intently, her eyes dark and deep and fathomless, studying him like she was trying to read his brain, and a little tremor of uncertainty wiggled beneath his aching ribs. She glanced down briefly, and when she looked back up, she smiled and her gaze was gentle and sweet. "Alright," she said, a wry little twist to the corner of her smile, "alright, Sam. Let's go see Bumblebee."

He relaxed, dismissing the odd moment. Mikaela sounded like she understood, that she knew what he was saying. They'd only known Bumblebee for days, perhaps, but that didn't change that he had driven wildly for nearly an entire _day_ with them, being chased by that evil cop car and _fought_ the bastard to protect them. That couldn't change that when Mikaela had roughly insulted him in a frightened attempt to tease and gain some sort of understanding where they all stood or that he had kicked them out just to chase down that Camaro and show her up -- thumbing his nose, so to speak, in response (and if he was human they would know it was alright, that he was their friend). They might have only known each other for a few days, but for humans, at least, that built bridges that could only be burned through being _abandoned_.

"That sounds like the best thing I've heard in a while," he said.

She smiled bobbing her head -- not quite a nod, almost a kind of 'yeah, yeah, whatever' kind of motion but without the dismissal, and she said, "I know, Sam. We'll see him."

It was reassuring -- Mikaela made it okay. Because she didn't let anything stop her or get in her way, and she was fearless with a saw and in face of battle. So she might be beautiful and she liked to dress so that it showed, but she still knew her way around an engine and knew the way life worked and she _made_ it work. Nothing would get in her way or make her back down -- unless it was Bumblebee that first night, when he'd had to coax her into understanding that his car might be a little mischievous, but he was still an alright sort of guy. It sort of amused him when he thought about it, that she's been frightened of Bumblebee who was friendly and bright and bubbly and _approachable_, just as his name and paint job and chosen camaflogue hinted.

Then again, he had to think that if she had an Autobot that she'd be comfortable with, it would probably be Ironhide. Any problem in the way? Shoot it. Why he thought such a simple approach to things would appeal to her, he didn't know.

Maybe she liked explosions? He bet that Ironhide liked to blow things up.

He bent in for another hug, just because he _needed one_, and it felt just as reassuring as the first. "Let's do this," he said, not sure why he felt he had to prepare himself for what was going to happen. Maybe it was because _every time he thought it was over_, it started all over again, but --

Mikaela shifted, stepping to the side and keeping her arm around him so that she fit right there next to his side like it was _supposed_ to be that way. He relaxed again, reminding himself that he could be sure of Mikaela -- she was certain, she knew what she wanted and she got it. She made it happen. And between the two of them, they could face alien robots and the government and not let anything stand in their way. Together, looking out for each other, they were unstoppable. Together, they could move the world, and nothing could challenge the bond that battle built between them.

Their two escorts had them all the way to the front of the building before the next interruption came -- this time in the form of Secretary of Defense Keller, and Captain William Lennox. Sam and Mikaela were less enthused about meeting them than they had been with meeting each other again, but it didn't change the weirdly warm-polite smile Keller shot them as he approached with determination.

"Hello, Sam, Mikaela," he said, reaching out to shake both of their hands. "You've done a fine duty for your country --"

Mikaela preemptively set her elbow warningly against Sam's ribs, and he had to wonder how she knew he would have objected to the statement of for whom he had done all of that running and screaming and defying.

"-- and as the Secretary of Defense, I personally thank you for it. We haven't had a chance to be properly introduced before this, have we? My name is Keller, and this is William Lennox. He actually does things other than sticking guns in people's faces." Keller laughed at his little joke, and Will grimaced a smile.

Sam's face didn't twitch, and Mikaela mouthed 'yeah' as she ducked her head a little to hide it. Neither of them were exactly eager to make good with the man. Oh, sure, Sam had really appreciated it when Will had got in Simmons' face, but that had lead to _guns_, and that was somehow more frightening than getting chased by the monster cop car. And he didn't appreciate the way that Will had seemed to be under the impression that he was some sort of coward, or that 'no man left behind' excluded giant robots trying to help save the world. If it hadn't been for him saying 'or a lot of people are going to die', which sort of clued Sam into the fact that the All Spark was the target and he needed to get it as far away from Mikaela and Bumblebee as soon as possible to draw the Decepticons away, it was very likely Sam would just have to be arrested or whatever after the battle was over.

Battle was ... just, _confusing_. All of the eye-blinding explosions and the invisible force of missile blasts and the sharp pain of shrapnel and the dull roaring that filled his shocked ears. Sam still didn't really know what he was thinking throughout the entire thing ... really didn't know what was exactly going through his head when he decided to screw the rest of the battle, or trying to survive, because _Bumblebee was wounded_. All he knew was that with such simple _blinding certainty_, he had to stay there. To see any thinking creature as upbeat and helpful as Bumblebee had proven to be in just hours of knowing him, laying there ... _legs blasted off_ ... it had just seemed so impossible. It had seemed like that if Bumblebee could _just stand up_, it would all be fine. And Sam honestly hadn't wanted to leave the robot behind, didn't want him to be alone, didn't want to ... just didn't.

"Hey, kid," Will said with a tired grin. "Nice to met you in less dramatic circumstances. Good job getting the cube up there ..."

For what good it had done, because the men he was trying to get the All Spark to had been killed. "Yeah," he said, "well, when I start running, it's kinda hard to get me to stop."

Will bobbed his head like it was okay. "Didn't run from the Big Bad One, though."

"Megatron?" he asked reflexively. "I guess. You weren't sitting around, either."

"Nah, I don't know anyone in their right mind who was." He shifted his attention to the other half of their two-person bubble of space. "Ms. Banes, right?"

"Yeah," Mikaela said, looking as tired as Sam felt. "Thanks for your help with Sector Seven."

"Fate of the world, you know? I like serving my country, but its not often you get to save the entire world."

Keller beamed, obviously pleased they were all getting along. "Come on, Lennox, the Autobots want to meet the man who took out one of the enemy practically on his own."

"Oh," Will said with surprise, looking unsettled already. "Well. Ah -- alright."

"Don't worry," Sam said blandly as he hooked an arm around Mikaela's shoulders. "They're a little strange, and Ironhide likes his cannons -- but they're good people."

It was impossible to tell if the carefully lack of emphasis on the word even registered with Will. Mikaela snorted, though, digging her elbow a little into his ribs, so he cut a sly look at her all the same to share the dig at Will's _ignorance_.

-+-

It was as they were heading toward the door that Sam was finally pried from Mikaela's side by none other than Keller. The old man took him a bit to the side, speaking to him in an oddly personal way -- after a second, Sam realized that Keller was meeting his eyes, head ducked toward him in a secretive way, as if they were --

... as if they were adults. It made him feel self-conscious, and he took extreme care to listen carefully.

"Sam, listen," Keller bid him, "the government ..." he made a sort of wishy-washy what-can-you-do motion with his head -- "was panicking, a bit, when we were drafting the treaty your friend might have mentioned."

Bumblebee had, in fact, mentioned something about an alliance being made between the American government and the Autobots ... a sort of understanding, a bit of mutual uninvolvement. "Yeah," he responded with a nod, "alright."

"It seemed like a small thing at the time ..."

That wasn't sounding good, he reflected, a feeling of dread causing that terrible numbness and singular focus to rise again. "_What_ seemed like a small thing?" he inquired, not bothering to voice the warning that nothing ill should befall his friends or allies, or there would be _Hell_ to pay.

"Well, it seems -- after all that was happening, they asked for you. What I mean is, the Autobots requested jurisdiction over you and Ms. Banes. As in, for now, you have the same sort of citizenship as a diplomat. That's not what you are, of course, but ... well. You're both wards of the Autobots. They aren't citizens, and they certainly don't have a _passport_, or visa, so this is a bit of a sticky situation ..."

It took a few moments to sink in, after which Sam wryly brought up his hand to rub it nonchalantly over his nose, feeling that focus fade into a bit of a responsible expression. "Ah -- well. We all have to serve our country, right?"

It was clearly not a way to keep the serious adult atmosphere that Keller had crafted, since the old man was now looking at him like an adult does, tolerantly, at a teenager. "As long as you see it that way, son," he said dryly.

Sam couldn't find it in him to morn the loss of that regard, though, still trying to come to terms with ... everything, now. Being wards of -- _oh wow_. He, like ... wow. They really wanted ... they asked for _him_. And, well, Mikaela, too, which only made sense, but ... wow. Teeth bared in a smile he couldn't restrain, he shifted uncomfortably, still young enough to be aware of the sheer differences in his status and Keller's. "Yeah, well, you'd just better hope that Mikaela takes to it as well."

"You think she won't? She seems pretty comfortable with the Autobots."

"Yeah, but I don't think she'll like being told what to do. God forbid she and Ironhide ever become friends."

A long pause, and finally the old man looked a little like he had some apprehensions. "Let me guess: ka-boom?"

The rusty barking laugh escaped Sam before he even realized it. "You'd better hope it's _only_ kaboom! Did I tell you about the time she took an electric saw to one of those things while it was attacking me? _She cut its head off_."

"... Dear God," Keller wheezed, sounding the age he looked, suddenly. "What have we done?"

He broke away from the Secretary, still grinning a little goofily, and just about caught up with his parents as they went out the door. He was treated to the immediate vision of all of the Autobots, standing around and waiting for them, and his eyes caught on Bumblebee, finally, and -- and ...

Sam wanted to hug his car. Was that weird? It was just -- he saw Bumblebee (finally upright, finally _standing_) and he was waiting and when they came through the doors, he made one of those chirp noises that wasn't that far from a car locking by remote (or that different from a car _alarm_, either), and the urge just appeared. In that very moment, more than a soft chair or his comfortable house or a hug from Mikaela, he wanted to just be able to _touch_ his car. Maybe lay on the hood, or even just relax against the side, or whatever -- and it was such a strange thing, and it was just so sudden and intense that he actually hesitated for a split second ... and the chance was lost.

Mikaela, five feet ahead of them all, abandoned her government escort and beat him to the punch, stepping right up close to the robot and flinging her arms around his leg. Bumblebee peered down at her with such a perfect expression of bemusement (though how he managed that without any real facial features ...?), and Sam ended up just standing back and fixing the smile that had started to slip at his sudden crazy urge. Mikaela must have been isolated as well, and Sam remembered too well how she was the one who had rescued the injured robot, so it wasn't any real surprise, right?

(... right?)

Sam glanced over to where Keller was introducing Will to the Autobots, overhearing Ironhide's gruff questions about ammo and Ratchet's chastisement and the black robot's defensive remark that no one else was talking. Shaking his head slightly, he turned back and wandered over to meet up with Bumblebee ... again. Mikaela had finished her greeting, and he was pretty sure that he could now restrain himself from hugging the robot himself ... or trying to climb him like a giant jungle gym, or any other numerous strange things that he wanted to do just to shake off everything that had happened since he got in the car and leave it all behind. It was _over_. He just -- he just needed to make sure that it was all over, and he could move on and do ... boring, everyday normal things again.

Then again, how could he _ever_ look at anything the same again? (It felt like walking on an Abyss that he might tumble into if he _only looked down ..._)

"Hey ... Bumblebee," he said when he was in comfortable speaking distance. He was still trying to get used to the idea that the Camaro he had bought and been chased by was something with it's own mind (_that wanted to stay with him!_) and was named ... Bumblebee. Not that it wasn't appropriate, really; he was yellow and black and friendly and really liked the radio. It was just that the kick ass alien robot was named _Bumblebee_. It was kind of like ... Strawberry Shortcake or Sunshine the Care Bare, and he _really_ didn't want to make that sort of connection least he start laughing at inappropriate times. Comparing Bumblebee to Strawberry Shortcake would be like ... like Strawberry Shortcake suddenly pulling out an Uzi, right?

Mikaela released the yellow leg and stepped back to make room as Bumblebee moved carefully around her. Sam was distantly aware of her giddy smile and the way she put her hands in her pockets, but most of his attention was fixed on Bumblebee, stepping back to make room as he settled down into a crouching kneel so that the people didn't have to yell up at him.

"Hello, Sam," he said, sounding strangely hushed. It was amazing that _robots_ could sound so _concerned_. "Are you alright?"

For a split second, the unmentionable subject hung in the air with a choking tension, each of Sam's damaged ribs grinding against one another as he inhaled ... like the air was molasses, thick and cold. "No," he rasped, and the tension broke like fine china, and he waved it away. "No, no, no -- I mean, yeah. Yes. I'm fine, you know -- fine." Thrusting his arms out, he turned as if showing his mother his tuxedo back in junior high when he'd been one of the percussionist in the band, going to Sweepstakes. "See? Fine. Not even --" the words caught in his throat, on the twisted metal and broken glass, but he choked them out. "-- not even enough for an iPod, you know?"

The bot's gears shifted to make a quiet groaning noise, and he had the distinct feeling that was the Autobot equivalent of a frown. "But I had chosen to extend my duties," he said softly, as if they were trying to have some strange sort of secret disagreement in whispers, except for the fact that Mikaela was obviously following the conversation easily. "I am your guardian -- I was supposed to be protecting you."

Dropping his arms against his side with a quiet 'whump', Sam hung his head. "Listen, no harm no foul, okay? I'm _fine_, so -- drop it, alright?"

Bumblebee drew back slightly, a slightly familiar noise whispering out. He looked back toward the other Autobots, who seemed to be paying absolutely no attention to them, then stood, moving as carefully as ever. Sam scrubbed his scalp with rough fingers, feeling awkward and stupid. There was nothing wrong with what Bumblebee was asking ... nothing at all. It was just ...

(_"You can't do this to me! Let me out of here!"_

_"Scream all you want, Mr. Witwicky. You're probably going to die in a few hours, so it doesn't really matter, does it?"_)

... two days was a long time. Really. In a few days, he had suddenly been swept into an intergalactic war with _robot aliens_, found out his car was one of them, and been chased by the largest, _nastiest_ one and _killed him_. Perhaps they had reasoned that _anyone_ needed space after that. Perhaps he had needed space, but ... he was sort of relieved that he didn't have to find out on his own. The government and certain rogue agencies had _made_ him have some space and come to terms with Autobots and Decepticons.

Maybe too much space. A week apart and he didn't know what was going on or why he was being the way he was.

Inhaling deeply, he avoided Mikaela's accusing gaze that told him straight up that she'd been lied to for too many years not to recognize a secret when she saw one, and focused on the dazed and somewhat frightened expressions on his parents' faces.

When he had been reunited with his parents, it had been so easy to sink back into that perspective of being a part of them ... being Samuel Witwicky, son of Ron and Judy. It was them against the government in that tiny debriefing room, but then they had met up with Mikaela and now the Autobots and ...

... and Sam wasn't so sure that he was ... that he was _that_ Samuel Witwicky. Not anymore. Not since -- not since Satan's Camaro. That had been the defining moment. When he had seen his car _stand up_, that created a singular experience that had cut him off from everyone he knew ... and when his father came in the morning to bail him out of jail, and Sam didn't even _try_ to explain what had happened, it was because the idea had set in ... that he had witnessed something that no one had and no one else would. From that moment, something separated him from everyone else.

And if that set him apart, then what did everything else that had happened to him (and him alone) mean? Because right then, looking at his parents, he felt as if they ... it was hard to figure out how he felt, but it was like ... they were so out of place. This wasn't _their_ world -- this intergalactic war and aliens who spent most of their time looking like cars ...

Clearing his throat, he glanced back toward the Autobots and saw that they were all pretty busy except for the three of them, so he awkwardly looked up. "Um, so, hey ..." he said uncertainly. "Ready to go meet my parents?"

Bumblebee looked slightly taken aback. "But I have met your parents."

"Yeah, but they thought you were a _car_ back then."

There was barely an remarkable hesitation, but it was likely that any internal debate had been so quick that Sam could hardly notice it. "Very well."

Sam cleared his throat again, even though it hurt like hell, and started to walk toward his parents. Behind him, he could hear the massive amounts of machinery working -- and unable to help it, he had to glance back and make certain that it was _Bumblebee_ who was making it, and not ... not ... _well_, one of the Decepticons, because ... he just had to. He had to check, just to make sure. It was Bumblebee, though, who walked so silently except for the quiet noise of his joints swiveling.

It took his parents moments to realize that one of the giant alien robots were approaching them. Judy had a hand to her throat, white and wild eyed, and Ron just had a look of dull surprise. Sam could sympathize, somewhat ... it had taken his car saving him from killer dogs and killer cop cars and all of that good stuff before he accepted that it might be on his side. Somehow, when that Decepticon had pounded on the hood of the car and Sam understood a _little_ of what such massive beings could do if they got it into their head, all of Bumblebee's attempts at interaction had seemed downright _harmless_.

"Mom," he called, trying to pull their attention down -- he'd had to smooth the way for Bumblebee before, with Mikaela, and it was better if they just focused on _him_, not on the alien. "Mom, Dad," he repeated, stopping a safe distance away and turning to gesture up. "I'd really like you to meet Bumblebee -- he's, uh, sorta saved my life. A lot. He's been pretending to be my car, you know, and he kinda wants to keep the job ... you know, to keep us safe. And -- um, please say yes, or otherwise we might have to something, like, _really rash_. And right now everyone really agrees that it's best if I keep living with you."

Bumblebee glanced down at Sam, but bent all the same, one hand on the ground and extending the other as if his parents could shake it. Or maybe the gesture was more symbolic; Bumblebee had already surprised him with the sort of extensive research he'd been doing while Sam had been restricted to texting him over a phone. Maybe Bumblebee had already ... you know, _watched first contact_ _movies_, to get like ... pointers.

"Greetings, Mr. and Mrs. Witwicky," he said gently, and he _definitely_ had been watching too many alien movies. "It's a pleasure to finally meet you."

"Oh," Judy said faintly, holding a shaking hand to her pale throat. " ... my God. Ron?"

Ron just stared blankly, mouth hanging open. Sam was beginning to worry that his father had actually passed out standing up, and that this whole ... 'sure you can keep ET' thing wasn't going as well as he had hoped.

"Ron!" Judy hissed frantically, glancing sideways and hitting his shoulder with her knuckles, eyes flickering between Bumblebee and her husband. "_Say something_, won't you?"

He jerked slightly when she hit him, blinked slowly, and swallowed. Speaking with a sort of dazed expression, he said, " ... we got a damn good deal for four thousand dollars."

"_Ron!_" she exclaimed in the high scandalized tones of a woman wronged. It was probably not very nice of Sam to laugh quite so hard, but it was too hard on his ribs _not_ to laugh. While Bumblebee made softly distressed noises and gave Sam accusing looks for being much too amused with the situation, in the background it was hard to mistake Ron's defensive tones when he protested: "_What_! It's true!"

-+-

- In case I should say this flat-out, this is a Bee/Sam fic. Also, saying this fic is "angst and crack and angst" is accurate. Absurdity abounds, but mostly Sam is a traumatized little woobie, so ... lolz.

- LOLZ. Sam and Mikaela meet up and she's all like "KISS TIEM NAO?" and Sam is all like "LOL WUT IS KISS TIEM? WARS MAI CAR?" I didn't even do that on purpose, though I glossed it up to make it more clear once I realized what I did.

- Chances are that if you discover what you think might be references throughout the story, they were entirely intentional. 8B


	2. Home Again

**Chapter Two : Home Again  
**His crazy had gotten pretty impressive in the last week or so, and he had this idea that he could probably win.

-+-

Going home could not have come soon enough. Sam would have liked to have gone home seven days ago, but certain, aha, rogue agencies had not agreed with his feelings. Tough on them -- not only was Sam alive, he was well and healing and _going home_, so they could ... he didn't know, _die in a fire_, perhaps. (_"I don't know what you're talking about!"_

_"Don't play stupid with me, boy. Now you __**activate this device**__ or I'll make you wish ET had never phoned home!"_) He shivered and made himself forget the unforgiving chill, and cold metal biting at his toes.

Of course, the government was still trying to kiss up, in a way. Man, when the government tried to kiss up, they could do it pretty good ... he guessed that he understood their point of view. They probably felt foolish in the wake of being so completely unprepared to deal with a hostile alien takeover. Of course, not many people expected hostile alien takeovers, and especially not by the _mechanical_ aliens that were very real. Who knew? But Sam thought he saw it _very_ clearly that if the Autobots hadn't been on Earth ... if the Autobots had been just _one day later_, or hadn't existed at all -- if it had been just the conquering party ...

... it was all well and good to say that _maybe_ they'd have been able to fight the Decepticons off, but one successful team of commandos with tank-killing bullets versus even a small band of Decepticons ... the sort of things they could do with computers, the _sort of things they could do_ --

And it was thanks to Sam, really. Optimus talked the talk about the freedom of all living things, and maybe he would have saved humanity, but ...

... but Sam and Mikaela had fallen from his shoulders so that Bumblebee had to catch them, and Optimus Prime did _nothing_ to prevent Sector Seven from capturing and torturing Bumblebee. Nothing. Bumblebee had just been a soldier that they'd had to sacrifice. The question was ... if it had come to it ... if Bumblebee hadn't caught them ... would Sam and Mikaela have just kept falling? Would that have been _acceptable_, once the glasses were in reach?

Would it have been?

(_"Is it possible, Sam ... that you reacted with violence because you think that he might have been right? That the Autobots will turn on us when they have no further use for us?"_

_" ... get the __**fuck**__ out of my face. Come back when you know the first thing about what you're talking about. You hear me?"_)

Sam was grateful, honestly, that the government provided comfy SUVs to drive his mother and father back to their home, and that Mikaela had begged off to go see her father. He was _grateful_ that he had been allowed to just climb into Bumblebee and remain with his traitorous thoughts. Maybe it had been duty, but hopefully it hadn't been, when Bumblebee had kept trying to save them. Sam didn't want to think about the dark thoughts buzzing around his head, circling and landing and taking flight to circle again, but right now ... right now ...

Staring out the darkened windows, Sam thought that it just might be the three of them against the world. He and Mikaela and Bumblebee. It was the three of them alone, aligned by some strange twist of fate, and an entire galaxy out there against them.

But it was still dark, and Sam knew that it had to be half just the atmosphere and half just his sleep deprivation talking. He felt like kin to Rip Van Winkle, right now ... like he could sleep forever, but he couldn't quite convince himself to relax enough to allow that to happen. If he fell asleep, he might wake up at home, and then he'd have to deal with his hysteric mother and angry father and all the questions he couldn't answer because he didn't know how. So instead, he breathed slowly and deep, feeling all of his battle wounds stretching and aching, and held onto the door handle and the seatbelt stretched across his chest.

Before he knew he was going to talk, he was suddenly asking in that grainy rasp: "I take it your vocalizer thingy is better now."

The murmuring radio turned off as the strange voice floated out of the vents. "Ratchet was finally able to reconstruct the destroyed piece, and my repair systems have completely assimilated it. There was never time before, and there really wasn't a point ... when I could speak to the others over our radio, I didn't really need to speak out loud."

"Ah," he said, "I get it. Now it's important, because humans don't have -- you know -- built in radios."

"Yes."

Sam wondered if that would have made a difference when Sector Seven took him, if they would have hesitated if his screams sounded more _human_, and shut his eyes tightly for a moment with the force with which he rejected the thought. It probably wouldn't have mattered at all. It certainly hadn't mattered that Sam _was_ human when they took him, had it? (_"I'm not some fucking alien you can just -- just cut to pieces for the hell of it! Just let me go, and I swear I won't press charges, or whatever!"_

_"Get over it, Witwicky. Your 'friends' aren't coming to help you, this time. Just keep talking -- I think you're changing the minds of a few of our people who were doubting if they should really be treating you like this."_)

He wasn't going to think about it.

"So," he said uncomfortably, staring at the dashboard. "What now?"

"What is it you refer to?" Bumblebee queried. "At the moment, we are going to your home."

"I mean -- what _now_? What happens next? In the grand scheme of things?"

"Sam," he said delicately, "the grand scheme of things for you and myself are vastly different. In the grand scheme of things for me, we remain on Earth. Perhaps we mentor the human race, but perhaps we shall eventually leave ... it depends on humanity, largely. On the other hand, in the grand scheme of things for you, you finish maturing, find a mate, raise a family ..."

"Alright, alright," Sam sighed. So Sam was completely different from Bumblebee, with goals symmetrical to their size difference, and symmetrical life spans -- that was what Bumblebee said, though not quite as bluntly as Sam. "I mean ... you stay with me, right? Do I return to school or join the military or ..."

"I think you're expected to pretend that none of this has happened," Bumblebee said.

For a moment, he sat there in disbelief, then forced himself to relax. His hands ached from how tightly he had been clutching at the door and seatbelt, and he had to bend them a little to get the blood flowing. "Yeah," he said, "right." Snorting quietly, he rubbed his forehead and then let his head fall back against the seat.

This had a strange sort of chain reaction. No sooner had his head hit the headrest did the rest of the seat keep going until it had fallen so far back he couldn't see over the wheel. While he was still laying there in surprise, a heat built in the seat and swiftly soaked into his tight back, and muscles he didn't know where tense suddenly loosened. Then the vibrations started and the air conditioner came on to balance the temperature, and -- and --

Sam sprawled there for a long moment, a little too surprised to react immediately since his bones were melting. Then he managed to scrape together what coherence he had left, since he had been staying awake out of pure bullheadedness and his will to continue to do so was making like his bones. "Um -- you'd better stop this," he warned, "I'm _exhausted_, and someone has to pretend to drive."

For a moment, the only response was the hum of the engine, but then the windows visibly darkened.

"Oh -- wow. Um." He vaguely remembered times when the windows had seemed dark when they'd been clear before, but ... well, more important things had been on his mind, like his possessed car chasing him or getting the hell away from the cop car. "Right," he added uselessly as he failed to pry his lids apart, though he tried really hard. Honestly. No, seriously, he did! Maybe his car had gassed him or something, but ... kind of hard to really think about those kinds of things. And also, if Bumblebee was _that_ persistent, Sam should just give in. "Okay. Um, thanks."

The radio seemed to murmur something, but his body was entirely too heavy for him to pay attention to it, and then --

_-- the cop car ('To Punish and Enslave', he'd never noticed that before) was chasing them down and Bumblebee shook him out like he had that one night and they were fighting and he was running, but something had gone wrong because now the Decepitcon was chasing him down and __**catching**__ him and the headlights with all those spikes twisted into his stomach like the blades of a blender and its nasty little partner was __**ripping off his skin**__ and it wore it like a coat and made that horrible little chittering sound while wearing Great Grandpa's glasses and the car tore off his arms, asking: "Are you ladiesman-two-one-seven?"_

"_-- so take me and let me in, don't break me and shut me out!"_

Sam jerked violently, startled and uncertain where he was for a moment while Papa Roach wailed on the radio. His fingers scrabbled uselessly at the door and snatched at the wheel before he remembered that he was in the Camaro, _his_ Camaro, and that his Camaro actually had a mind of its and could drive itself much better than he could. Breathing out heavily, he flopped back into the seat and scrubbed at his eyes with his knuckles.

"Okay," he rasped. "That time ... that time was _definitely_ a bad dream ... nightmare." The radio fell silent in the middle of a line, and he spoke a little louder. "Just a nightmare. It's normal ... I've been having them since black-white-and-ugly came after me. Probably'll be having them for a while."

For a long moment, the only sound was the tires on the road, Bumblebee traveling as silently as an electric car. Then another song came on -- that 'Lullaby' or 'Rockaby' or whatever song. It wasn't exactly his favorite song, but he smiled crookedly anyway. "Yeah, thanks." There was, of course, no way he'd be falling asleep, no matter how tired he was. Not for all the warm seats and soothing vibrations in the world. He peered out of the window blandly, studying where they were. It would be a while before they reached home. Just about mid-morning, actually. _Great_.

It wasn't just the disturbingly graphic nightmares, either ... he had a lot on his mind. Mostly the very robot he was riding in and the request he had made to stay with Sam. Sure, Sam had spun it to his parents as it being that the Autobot had just showed up and he got dragged into it and Bumblebee felt obliged to protect him and had done a damn good job (and he had to explain it to Bumblebee that it was for the best) .... but the fact remained that he wasn't sure exactly what it was between the two of them.

... and maybe there was something wrong with him that he was more uncertain of his place with the Autobot that had been declared his guardian than he was of his place with the girl of his dreams. Or really ... he was pretty uncertain of the entire thing all the way around, but the thing with Bumblebee worried him more than the thing with Mikaela -- he and Mikaela were on equal footing, having just been shoved into an alien world, sharing that and having that connection. It was _real_ -- he felt it. But Bumblebee ...

In his more pessimistic moments with those people (_don't think about it don'tthinkaboutitdon'tthinkaboutit!_), he'd figured that there _was_ a war going on for Bumblebee's people, and now that the other Autobots were around, he sort of expected that Bumblebee would want to go with them. Not that he was complaining -- not by far. He was _thrilled_ that Bumblebee hadn't tried to ask out, that he wanted to stick around for whatever reason. It was just ...

Bumblebee had a completely different set of concerns from Sam. He was -- he was an _alien_. And part of him wanted to say _duh_, but that other part at the back of his mind just whispered _now you understand_.

(It said, _there's a reason humans are still afraid of the dark_ ...)

So maybe he wasn't sure where he stood with Mikaela -- he knew it was firm footing. Her warm reception had proven it -- even a week later, she didn't have regrets about getting in the car. They were -- at _least_ friends. And maybe that was all ... that was fine. It seemed as if Sam's libido had taken a permanent vacation, because ... well, sure, he might have been able to think about how sexy she was and how awesome it was that she was just so _collected_ about the whole thing with the giant robot aliens, when they were being introduced to everyone. But ...

A lot had happened since then. Jesus Christ, he had been chased by a monstrosity who looked like something that even a sci-fi horror aficionado would have run screaming from. He had _thwarted_ that thing, denied it, even to the point where he knew that the only direction he had left to go was _hundreds of feet straight down_. He denied orders of a suicidal military commander and held something that he ... somehow understood held the power of a hundred nuclear power plants while it destroyed another living being. He'd been kidnapped and prodded, psychoanalyzed and bargained away like a flashy pawn or a -- a valuable piece.

That changed a lot of things. That changed _him_.

That meant that he knew that the footing was firm with Mikaela, but with the aliens ... it was a slippery slope and he was in the dark with his eyes bound. And he was dead on his feet, practically, but ... instead of trying to rest, or putting it off, he knew he had to talk about it. And just to think that a few weeks ago that he'd procrastinate like mad, even though his parents always finished things as soon as they could be. He might as well get it over, to be honest ... "Hey, Bumblebee? I think we should talk."

He frowned slightly; now if _that_ didn't sound like the 'break up' conversations of a dozen movies? The soft jazz on the radio faded down into barely a murmur, and Sam assumed that was a signal to continue. "You weren't pretending to be my car for very long," he said slowly, "so I don't know for sure how much you really understand about the whole ... being a high school kid's car gig. I mean -- it's just that you're like a fighter, right? I don't really see how being a ... a _chauffeur_ is really going to go over well."

Even though he was as silent as an electric car, there was still _some_ engine noises, and Sam could hear the different pitches it seemed to worked at ... and it was kind of interesting how they seemed to indicate different moods. Sam might have thought they really didn't have feelings if not for Bumblebee. At the moment, he seemed to be considering Sam's words -- or his response. Finally, he said, "It's actually more like downtime, Sam. I was disabled in the fight, and while I'm back on my feet, it's beneficial to have some time off. Still, my primary duty at the moment is to assure your safety. While several of the Decepticons were damaged or offlined during the fight, many escaped. It is safe to say that it's unlikely they are aware of the exact circumstances of Megatron's death, but that doesn't change that they are aware that Samuel James Witwicky was involved in the dispute. The knowledge of the All Spark's destruction will not be widespread, and some are aware that you were auctioning the glasses that held the location of the All Spark."

Which all made sense, so he nodded. The Decepticons could come after him, especially in the early days before it became known that it wasn't very useful. "So ... what? You're going to be snoozing while I'm at school, then?" he asked wryly.

"I predict that I shall be too ... 'strung out' to 'snooze' for a while, Sam," Bumblebee said in a remarkably dry voice. Sam's cheek twitched when he finally placed the accent as one of those formal British ones. His Camaro had a _British_ accent. He managed not to snicker. "Your species is ... distressingly prone to damage."

For a moment, he didn't quite understand -- and then it kind of clicked into place. He'd been struggling with his ability to fully comprehend the Autobots in their entirety, so why shouldn't it happen the other way around, too? The way that they must view the humans ... "yeah," he agreed, remembering just how wretchedly abused he had looked under the stark lights in the bathroom. Once he'd been liberated, there had been extensive effort to patch him up, which made a lot of sense if they had gotten the impression that the Autobots valued him. Most of his lighter bruises were gone and his scrapes were scabbed over, but not much could be done for his fractured and broken bones. No expense had been spared in their effort to 'fix' the damage done both during the fight in Mission City and -- after. "But we're also pretty good at staying alive, too," he added with a small amount of dry humor. "And you should also know I'm a teenager. I'm supposed to be ... like, rebellious and angsty and hate authority figures."

Bumblebee was quiet a moment, supposedly researching his claims on the Internet before speaking: "Your kind finds this wildness of behavior amusing?" he inquired with some curiosity.

Shrugging, he said, "well, everyone finds _something_ amusing, and no matter_ what _it is, _someone_ finds it amusing. You know, there are some really sick people out there who make jokes about eating babies -- _don't search that_!" he shouted suddenly, sitting up and making Bumblebee swerve slightly in surprise -- but he was too busy bent over coughing violently to care. "I would _not_ Google that if I were you," he rasped softly, laying back to rest. It was hard, a little, to remind himself not to ... er, well, _cuddle_ the warm seat. It was soft, after all, and the leather was supple and therefore not unlike hugging Mikaela (and don't think he didn't remember that he'd never gotten to hug his car). Well, other than the obvious part about it being a leather seat and belonging to an alien, instead of being human and female. But the sensation was the same -- the reassurance was the same. The sense of _reality_ was the same. "You have to be very careful about what you Google," he added, then winced. "God, I hope you didn't download the Internet ..."

"That would have been a waste of memory space," Bumblebee said patiently. "Of course we don't download the Internet. Your method of arranging and storing data is very space-consuming. Are you alright? That -- sounded uncomfortable."

"Fine," he said, snorting softly. "But, you know, we got our technology from _Megatron_, so ..."

Bumblebee fell quiet at that, and after a moment, Sam shivered violently in remembering as well. He tentatively reached out and patted the wheel, but his own body corded and tensed with the urge to lash out -- and couldn't. The only thing to lash out against here was Bee. Instead, he forced himself to lay back and stare out the darkened window, one hand still on Bumblebee's steering wheel and swallowing in an attempt to soothe his sore throat. That was the one thing that none of the doctors at the government could do anything about, because they couldn't figure out what was wrong with it. They'd finally waved it away as being the dust that he'd inhaled.

"What about a car wash?" he asked with amusement, struggling to make himself heard.

A moment later, the radio crackled. "This is a ritual humans engage in?" Bumblebee inquired, baffled.

"Yeah," Sam said. "When we really like our cars. The only reason I didn't wash you that first day was because of the rust and the ... paint."

"You were concerned it would agitate the issue," Bumblebee surmised. He seemed to consider the issue for a moment. "It would be expected for you to want to wash this form?"

"Bee," he said with some disbelief and a lot of amusement. "You have a killer engine and a concept body. I'm expected to like ... _worship_ this car."

"I see. If this is an issue, it would not be hard for me to reverse the changes and regain the 'seventy six' style body --"

"No!" Sam yelped with alarm. "No, no, no, no! That's okay. I mean -- ah, well, I already thought up _excuses_, you know, and I'd hate to put all of that effort to waste -- _you were yanking my chain, you jerk!_" How he knew this was debatable, but the car was _definitely_ projecting amusement. "You, my friend, have a cruel sense of -- oh, no! No, no, no! You mean to tell me that 'Satan's Camaro' mess was a joke, too?"

Bumblebee actually sounded a bit sheepish. "Not -- exactly. I was a bit -- ah, _restless_ then."

" ... God help us if you ever feel so restless again," he said dryly, looking out the window. False dawn stained everything gray -- but for the sky, which was white. Everything seemed strangely bleak, and he wished the sun would actually rise and flush everything with oranges and pinks while the sun sat red in the sky. Maybe then, everything would look hopeful instead of it seeming like it could only get worse.

-+-

_TO: "Miles Lancaster" (ovar9000miles)  
__FROM: "Sam Witwicky" (nosacrifice_novictory)  
__SUBJECT: RE: RE: its sam_

--------------------------------------------------------

its a long story. i just got tired of ladiesman, k? i'll tell you everything tomorrow. i'm too tired to meet anywhere today.

--------

Aside from 'terrorist attacks' in Mission City? Nothing much, dude. Everyone was talking about you and the Evil

Jock Concubine being gone at the same time, though. DeMarco's pretty upset, man, so I'd watch out if I were you.

Why _were_ you gone, and does it have anything to do with the EJC?

What the hell is up with your email? Not that I'm really complaining, it's just that I've been trying to reach you at the

old one. Did it get hacked or what?

--------

miles

sorry man ive been busy. i just got back into town. what have i missed?

"Be yourself" is about the worst advice you can give some people.

The stories and information posted here are artistic works of fiction and falsehood.

Only a fool would take anything posted here as fact.

"Be yourself" is about the worst advice you can give some people.

-+-

_he stumbled numb and blind guided guided guided only by the screeching sounds of a wounded animal. He had to had to had to get there had to free it had to save it. Had to had to had to -- _

_then he was falling why falling a pit of course he should have seen that one coming oh god oh god please don't let there be spikes at the bottom oh please. Anything but spikes and he breaks through the water's surface. It's the dam, and he hears the screaming still and he had to do __**something **__to make it stop, please make it stop. He was running running running down the halls trying to find what was making that noise that hurt his ears and makes his chest tighten. _

_He found it, he found _him_, a man covered in yellow armor, but not a man -- tied down to a table and they were doing horrible things to him they were __**cutting him apart**__. _

_he wish they'd stop, he told them to stop, but they cut and cut and cut, placing the blue-bleeding flesh inside of radios and computers and televisions._

-+-

Sam reluctantly slid out of the absurdly comfortable seat and closed the door with a concealed wince. Although Bumblebee had indicated that Sam should proceed as normal as far as pretending that he was an inanimate car, it was ... weird. Because Sam just happened to _know_ that his car was not, in fact, inanimate, and had scary guns attached. And. Um. He didn't really want to shut the door too hard, just it case -- well -- it ... it didn't make sense. He thought it should, but at the same time the sheer unreality of the situation made the logic ... not. Logical, that was.

And he had his suspicions that Bumblebee intentionally made his seats entirely too comfortable. Sam was tired, but not _that_ tired ... although, to be perfectly honest, Bumblebee's seats had always been kinda really nice. And well ... anyway.

So there Sam was, headed up to the front of Miles' house to knock on the door, when Bumblebee totally blew his own cover by honking the horn. Sam froze mid step and whipped around, unable to quiet control his expression and -- _god_, he'd look _so crazy_ if someone was watching, but --

"Dude!"

He whipped back the other direction, face morphing in an instant into his 'nothing suspicious here, of course not, _I love you, dad_' look, and he gestured. "Miles!" he said brightly. And much too happily.

"Where have you _been_?" Miles demanded as he thudded messily down the steps, an accusing look on his face that totally melted off into a blank look of shock. " -- _and oh my God, what happened to your car_?"

It was nice to know that someone else other than Sam could still reach those sort of octaves after puberty. It was actually a little gratifying -- at least it took giant robot aliens after his life to make _Sam_ reach them. Okay, so it also took giant robot aliens to make _Miles_ reach them, but Miles didn't _know_ that he was looking at a giant robot alien and -- whatever. "Haven't you seen the news, Miles?" he asked, watching his friend's corrected course as he approached the Camaro. It was gratifying, for sure.

At that, Miles turned to him with an incredulous look. "No way -- Mission City? You were _there_?"

"Ground zero, too." Sam couldn't exactly blame Miles for how his gaze slid back to Bumblebee. He wandered lazily back toward the car, hands on his hips and keeping a sharp eye out -- but Miles seemed disinclined to touch. "It really messed me up," he added. After a second, he grabbed the edge of his shirts and pulled them up, wiggling a bit to make sure none had caught on his bandages. "Check out the _size_ of these bruises!" he added with gusto, gesturing with a free hand.

Miles looked up and reflexively grimaced. "Holy -- _man_, that looks like a giant hand print ..." He came around the side of the car to get a better look, one hand taking a grasping shape. "What the hell, did you get in a fight with King Kong?" He actually sounded somewhat horrified but mostly fascinated.

Sam snorted a little, dropping the shirt. "Sorta ... I got knocked around pretty bad. They had us wrapped up forever ... worried about bio-terrorism" -- 'bunny finger' quotations --"so I had to stay in isolation _forever_." A reflexive shiver shook him and he rubbed his arm as he dropped his eyes -- catching on the yellow of the robot beside them. He made a sweeping motion, redirecting Miles' attention to the Camaro. "Messed up my car ... I got a new body for him. Same as ever on the inside, though ... still has that thing with the radio." He felt vaguely like a secret agent, saying things like they happened but allowing Miles to believe that things had happened more _mundanely_.

It was this time as Miles looked at the Camaro that the vague thoughtful look finally lit up into recognition. "Dude -- I've seen that body! That's the new _concept Camaro_ -- No way!"

"Yeah, I met up with a guy who really specializes in that sort of stuff. Like I said, the outside's just been gussied up."

"Too bad you couldn't get a whole new car if it was so trashed ..."

That was a thought, only ... um, not an inanimate car, so this was like _way_ better. "Nah," he said, looking at Bumblebee with a smile that felt strange on his face. "I wouldn't trade this car for the world. Or you know. Yeah."

That strange nearly subsonic noise came creeping out the window, then the radio crackled a second before Bumblebee blared out a song: _"My folks bought me a bitchin' Camaro with no insurance to match ... So if I happen to run you down, please don't leave a scratch."_

Sam's entire face just kind of froze in an awkward position, while Miles stared at it. He was in the middle of making vague 'I'm gonna _kill you ..._' motions when Miles turned back, and had to pretend like he hadn't been. _Goddamn it, Bumblebee ..._ Miles continued to look at him, and then the car, and then Sam a few times, so Sam made a desperate attempt to look ashamed as he dipped his head toward the car. "I told you it still had the radio thing."

"No kidding," Miles said slowly, then shook his head. "It played that same damn song _last time_ you brought it over."

"Heh."

But no matter how frantically Sam's heart beat under his ribs when he thought that somehow their game might be up, no matter how he wished he could strangle Bumblebee for playing it too loose, his grunted response held a distinctively _pleased_ tone that he was glad Miles was too distracted to notice. They stared at the sleek yellow car, a supernaturally clean gleam flashing over the curves under the Californian sun. Shiny, shiny car.

_Too_ shiny, Sam realized in a sudden panic as Miles' hands went out to the car. "Uh -- buddy -- would you not -- uh ... nnm ..." Sam cringed and fell silent as flesh made contact with shiny yellow metal, rubbing at his scalp with stiff fingers and averting his gaze. Too late -- disaster fully realized.

Reluctantly, he looked back to try to tell how Bumblebee was taking it, but ... well ... okay, so his car could project emotions, but it didn't really work from this distance, and cars don't exactly have a face, so ... unless Bumblebee set off his alarm, Sam was forced to assume that this was part of the whole 'pretending to be inanimate' gig. Still ... he really, _really_ wished that Miles wouldn't stroke the hood that way.

Come to think of it, cars might not have a face but ... Sam slowly tilted his head sideways, considering it; if he wasn't completely delusional, that whole hood and bumper configuration -- it looked rather a lot like Bumblebee had a sleazy leer. Or the Camaro did. Whatever.

This unfortunate realization coupled with the fact that Miles was practically drooling over the pretty little sleek lines and groping Bumblebee up, made Sam's mind go places it was really too tired to go in. Sufficed to say that Sam squeezed his eyes shut and gave his head a good shake to get rid of the mental images that had filled them, largely created by some mental version of photoshop and those posters of girls in their bikinis sprawled on fast cars.

Sam's mind? Completely broken.

Suddenly, Miles turned on him with huge, intent eyes. "Sam."

Broken mind or not, Sam recognized that tone anywhere. "No," he said immediately, reflexively, no thinking necessary, "oh _no_. Whatever it is? No."

Miles was staring at him like a crazy person -- helter skelter Charles Manson, with those crazy eyes. "Sam," he repeated.

"No!" Sam insisted, pointing as if he were going to fence those crazy eyes with his finger. "I refuse!"

"We have _got_ to take it out for a spin," Miles said in the tone of someone who had Found God, and Saw That It Was Good.

"We have got to do _nothing_," he said, only vaguely noticing that his face was doing some insane acrobatics in his attempt to see Miles' crazy and raise it by his own. His crazy had gotten pretty impressive in the last week or so, and he had this idea that he could probably win.

"Yes. _Yes,_ we do. Sam, this car? It's _awesome_. I don't care if it _is_ a junker underneath. This -- _this is a car that must be driven_!"

"You've already gone riding in it! _It's the same car_, Miles!"

"But it's so _shiny_ and _new_ looking! It's -- it's gussied up! Let's go riding in your gussied up junker! No one has to know it's the same inside!"

" ... are you even listening to yourself?"

" ... no?"

It figured. Miles always began to sound a little melodramatic and dramatically 'romantic' around the time he stopped listening to himself. On the other hand, it also meant that Miles had planted the idea deep inside his head and that it would resurface at the most inopportune times, so -- "alright, alright," Sam sighed. "Let's go for a ride in my -- my 'gussied up junker'."

Miles made a noise that would have suited a thirteen year old girl better, bolting for the passenger side. At least he didn't think he got to drive, Sam reflected with a sort of sinking doomed feeling. Then again, neither did Sam, honestly ... he just got to sit in the driver's seat and pretend that he wasn't surprised when his car suddenly took a corner.

The problem that went completely unforeseen by Sam was that Miles was fairly enthusiastic about things he liked, especially _new_ things he liked, and Bumblebee apparently had a bit of an ego that had inflated quite a lot under the admiring words. Only, Sam didn't know this until Bumblebee located some roads and actually took them _on a ride_.

The grind and scrape of rubber over the dust and rocks seemed both too loud and nearly silent in Sam's ears, a breath escaping him in a backwards gasp as the seatbelt tightened across his chest and kept him from sliding some crazy direction due to a corner cut too close for comfort. Where Bumblebee had even _found_ these rough back roads that no cop would _dream_ of driving on, he'd never know. His ribs ground unpleasantly together as they roared down the road, the air conditioner spewing an Arctic wind over the cold sweat that had appeared on his waxy skin. Normally, Sam would have been complaining about the speed in some fashion -- any fashion at all -- but for one: he had a passenger that was shrieking in glee and _did not know_ that the car was driving itself. Also, two: he was a little out of breath and preoccupied and fairly certain he wasn't even fully aware of just how fast they were going, and Sam liked his complaints to be _accurate_, thank you very much. That way he was _always_ justified.

Blessed be the luck that Sam had never accumulated any open wounds during the crazy days of finding out about Robot Aliens, because he was sure they'd be bleeding right now.

He finally managed to start fighting for a breath, feeling weak and pale and miserably cold, and yet ... and yet, he didn't even consider fighting for control of their speed, or trying to tell Bumblebee about just how agonizing the ride was. And maybe that was because ... under the air-stealing agony of bruised flesh and crushed muscles and cracked bones, his heart was pounding wildly and little waves of shivers that had _nothing_ to do with the AC or the pain were shaking through his frame and making his skin prickle and his fingers twitch against the steering wheel. He didn't have the breath to spare in yelling or hooting, and the core-deep pain kept a smile off his face, but that didn't mean that Sam wasn't enjoying the bouncing, sliding, dust-flinging driving that Bumblebee was engaged in all the same.

Sam was an adrenaline junky. He knew that about himself. He also knew better than to try to indulge that ninety-nine percent of the time because he saw where it got people, which was anywhere from _nowhere_ to six feet under.

The thing was, this wasn't Sam's decision and he wasn't in control, and if Bumblebee was so very hung up on the idea of being his guardian, then surely it couldn't be that bad. So while alien metal trapped him inside a construct that was a familiar (and welcome) lie, while his best (human) friend breathlessly crowed with delight, Sam felt that familiar feeling of _all-knowing_ and _all-being_ that he got under the influence of that addictive drug that hid inside his own body. He felt every inch of skin, every taunt tendon, every soft and crushed muscle and every brittle and fracture-riddled bone -- and then it seemed to sharpen even more, because before he knew it, it felt as though he could feel every tubular length of vein and every imperfect stretch that had been compressed and crushed and busted, every circular plate of blood, to the adrenaline flooding every organic millimeter of him and what _made_ him.

And that widesense of high was exactly what Sam's heart secretly beat for. He had forbidden it to himself, and that made it even more delicious.

At last, they slid to a halt, Bumblebee rocking a little more on his wheels than a normal car should. Sam was fairly certain his car had just enjoyed himself a little too much; reflexively, he ran his hand down the curve of the steering wheel, and looked over as Miles just continued to enthuse breathlessly.

"That was awesome!" he exclaimed, reaching his hands above his head and pressing them to the roof. "Where in the hell did you learn to drive like that?"

"I didn't," Sam said, and his voice sounded tight, though his was breathing shallow to avoid any unnecessary movement. He glanced at the dashboard and then looked back over to Miles, smiling a smile that felt strained even if it was honest. "Ready to head back?" He ran a hand along the door handle. "Though maybe a little less sliding on the gravel. I think enough dust has gotten on the Camaro, I think the rest of it should be left _behind_ us."

"Hey, whatever you want, dude, you're the one driving."

Bumblebee's engine rumbled, then he spun out for a moment before finding traction and rocketing back the way they just came. Sam's heart gave a hard thump in surprise and alarm, but he couldn't say that the dust wasn't being left behind them.

Jesus Christ, Bumblebee was worse than a five year old.

-+-

Or maybe a three year old, Sam thought sourly as he turned off the faucet, having spent the last ten minutes rinsing the dust off Bumblebee -- it was only dust, after all, not dirt or anything that would require a scrubbing. He'd almost been willing to let the alien suffer, up until he made two realizations, the first being that he'd better have a bit of time to calm down from what high remained and the second being that he'd be a bit of a jerk to leave Bumblebee dusty after the kicking ride. Of course, one thing led to another and ...

"You'd better appreciate this," he grit out between his teeth, screw driver in hand and throwing the rocks in Bumblebee's wheel tread evil looks.

Damned if the Autobot didn't _flash his lights_.

"Jerk."

* * *

- This time around, we learn a bit more about what happened to Sam while he was in S7 jurisdiction. Moar in later chapters! 8D

- Just to be clear, Sam's mental image based on the girls-on-hot-cars posters did _not_ include Miles, lolz.


	3. Can't Relate

**Chapter Three : Can't Relate**

He was waiting right in the way for the parking lot with his shiny new blue Hummer, propped against it like he was the most awesome thing since awesome was awesome. Which he obviously wasn't, since Sam had met awesome and he came in yellow and black.

-+-

The very first rule that he and Sam hammered out between them was 'do not pry'.

His mother told him, sometimes, about how when he and Sam first met at the park, Miles with his nanny and Sam with his mother, they fought. Nonstop. Bloody fists and tears and bruises from teeth as far as the eye could see. Miles doesn't know what in the _world_ two five year olds could have been fighting over. Possibly who was the best Power Ranger. The fact remained that Miles was an angry little kid. He didn't have the best examples at home, and wouldn't for several years. Sam had that perfect little life with his mother who stayed at home with him and gave him suckers and his father who tossed him in the air and caught him.

Miles knew that back then, he'd been jealous out of his mind. Well, he imaged he was. He knew why he was angry, but why was _Sam_ angry ...?

They remained bitter enemies until third grade. That's probably the only reason Miles even _remembered_ that Sam had cried bitterly over the fact that Mikaela was totally in love with that guy who stared in The Mummy. Just previous to that episode, Sam had given his lunch to Miles because for the third time he'd come to school without lunch and they'd call his parents if he didn't have something to eat (and the last thing Miles wanted was to be brought to their attention). After Miles had enough of Mikaela's talking to the teacher of how awesome whatever-his-name had been, he'd ... sorta ... well, anyway, Mikaela had shunned him for the rest of that year for his abundant disdain for her idol.

After that, he and Sam somehow ended up best of friends.

In fourth grade, when there was ... a messy ... separation going on at home, no matter how badly he behaved, Sam would just sort of blink at him and change the subject. He knew that Sam had been an anchoring force for him, and there was no telling where he would have ended up if they hadn't been friends. Sam had never suffered the way he had, but he never made the attempt to understand Miles. Never. He just accepted it all and learned the ins and outs of their friendship, accepting the rules with blithe ease just so long as Miles never got them into too much trouble. That was the way it was. Sam didn't ask about Miles, and Miles never let Sam's general ignorance of the way the world work get to him.

Sam, quite plainly, didn't really live in the world as Miles and everyone else knew it. Then again, having met Sam's rather ... unusual mother, he knew where he got it from.

So when Sam came back from being gone for a week with his pimped out Camaro, a wan and hollow look to his eyes, and laughingly showing off some of the most horrific bruises that Miles had ever seen (and he had seen a lot), he didn't ask. Rule number one: Do not pry.

[click]

_" -- world wide communication black out resulted in a plane crashing in the middle of Mission City, and rioting broke out --"_

[click]

_"-- several dead. Due to the communication black out, there are no records of the events that took place in this very block, but the devastation is wide spread, and we are still finding bodies, two weeks later ..."_

[click]

_" -- a middle America ground zero. The fumes seemed to have caused lingering psychological issues for those who were present for this horrific event --"_

[click]

-+-

After the kicking ride that Sam suffered silently through and then cleaning up Bumblebee after said ride, he'd gone inside and immediately tried to replace the feeling of adrenaline with pain pills. On the upside, he actually needed them, on the downside, he probably took way too many, and by the time the sun had set, he was drugged completely out of his mind.

Which was probably bad, and meant that he'd feel like a total ass next time the school did one of those 'just say no' rallies, but at least he didn't feel like crap anymore. Christ, some of his ribs had probably _unhealed_ or something.

But at least he _knew_ he was drugged, which ... um, begged the question: 'what was he doing outside at night while he was as drugged as he was?' The simplest answer was that he was _drugged_, hello? And that sort of meant that he wasn't at his analytical best. The really sad thing about it was that they didn't have pills powerful enough to take care of the worse of it, so he was mostly comfortable, as long as he didn't move much or inhale or ... you know, _exist_. Therefore, one would think he'd go to bed.

Not Sam. No, Sam went outside to sit on the front porch while a giant robot alien pretended to be a shiny new car in his driveway, and while he was at it, he might as well ogle the sky.

Once upon a time, Sam loved the nighttime and couldn't wait for it to arrive. His mother used to wash the laundry at night while his father worked on the now-optimal condition classic car he spent so much time researching and looking for car clubs (and which had a recently fresh coating of shiny green paint) and Sam used to sit on top of the washing machine and tell his mother about what he'd done during the daylight hours and what he had seen and ask why things worked like that. And when they were all lucky and his dad didn't do something nearly disastrous to the car, the three of them would even go on a late night ride, and he'd get to lay on the back of the car and watch the stars.

Sam used to love the night. But it only took around fifteen minutes of him looking up at it while his whole body throbbed painfully in sync with his heart to stop looking at the soft blackness of the sky overhead and start seeing some of the brighter stars. After seeing those stars, he started to wonder about the aliens that had been in his backyard a few weeks ago. This, of course, lead him around to starting to get pretty paranoid. The sky started to look a lot less like a black fuzzy roof with some holes, and started looming overhead like gaping emptiness shot with threatening lights, like bullets frozen midair and waiting to rain down on his head.

It gave him a headache to think that somewhere out there was a dead planet ... an entire planet of massive robotic organisms, so very similar to humans. An entire intergalactic war.

_"Disgusting," and that hollow metal thud and the short terrible scream_.

The remembered blind terror shook him to the core, and he realized very suddenly that without even noticing, he had come to hate the sky ... especially at night. It was dark and he could see the stars and that only reminded him just how vulnerable his planet was, sitting there naively in space, as if metal hell demons couldn't rain down like vengeance fire from the emptiness hanging above him and consume _eagerly_ everything they knew and loved.

(If they were lucky, the Decepticons would kill them all quickly).

Sam hated the night sky. It was a truth of vulnerability he never asked to know.

-+-

It was Sunday, the day after Bumblebee cracked a few more of his ribs and zebra'd Optimus Prime's hand print in different colors with a seat belt, and Sam was sitting outside of Mikaela's house with Bumblebee. He was a little nervous, though not for really all that usual of a reason. Few things were as daunting as the words "we need to talk" from a girl. It would have been worse, though, if Sam was like ... dating Mikaela. Or maybe he was; it was hard to tell.

Sam had a lot of things on his mind. Mikaela used to be the first thing he thought about when he woke up and the last before he fell asleep ... now it was pretty much 'Giant Robots from outer space' with mild variations like 'and one wants to be my friend' and 'my-car-is-so-awesome'. Which might explain why he wasn't sure if they were dating, nor was he sure if he should be disappointed if they weren't. It also might explain why they needed to talk, but seeing as how it was a girl who suggested it, and girls' minds worked in mysterious ways and he'd pretty much resigned himself to not understanding them ... ah, well.

To be perfectly honest, right now Sam could use something that _wasn't_ complicated and -- and Mikaela didn't really fit that bill so much. Not really. All this crazy stuff had happened, and though he could remember things that should have given him some measure of hope that there was _something_ there ... well, there _was_ something there. He just didn't know what it was. And he had this strange feeling that all the crazy stuff over the last few weeks wasn't exactly something that they should try starting anything over because ...

It just wasn't. He didn't want something complicated right now, and he thought ... he thought that the way that they had worked together, to fight Frenzy and stand against S7 and their utterly complete agreement in Mission City that _Bumblebee must not be left behind_ ... that was what he wanted. That ... because it wasn't what he wanted from her at first. He'd been hell bent on stealing Mikaela from Trent because there was just _something_ there, something about her that he'd wanted more than anything he could remember and he was _tired_ of not having her and she finally seemed to notice him as well, so ...

And his head hurt. Because there was still something there, but somewhere between her saying that she was glad she got in the car and meeting her in that hallway, he ... seemed to have ... _got her_. Well, not really, obviously, but ... she was there. _With him_. Not ... _romantically_, but she was ... in this entire mess. And that felt like enough.

_Of course_ he thought it would be kind of nice to date Mikaela. Just ... not right now. Not right now. It was such a supremely strange thing to think, but ... it was just that Sam had a lot of crap going on right now. He had giant alien robots, and ... nightmares that he'd rather not think about, and his freaking-out parents and all of that. He didn't have ... _time_. That was the pervading feeling he'd had since they'd arrived home: like there wasn't enough _time_.

But he had still found time to call her after being split apart. He had gone through the effort of finding out her home line from the phone book after his first email to Miles, and he gave her a call and left a message (or two) on her message machine (because her cell phone had gone missing at some point, even though she swore up and down that she had it up until they were kidnapped by S7). He hadn't tried to push her, of course, even though they were in this entire alien intergalactic war together, because he knew that _he _wouldn't have liked being pushed. Thankfully, she called him back the next day -- today, and that was why they were sitting outside her house waiting for her to appear.

She did, finally, descending the short steps dressed in jeans and a sweater, hair pulled back into what even he could identify as a 'lazy' ponytail. Both of them were wearing copious amounts of long sleeves even in the heat to hide the horrendous amounts of bruises they both had. Granted, of the two, Sam had been the one who had been knocked around the most, but he had tackled her off her moped/vespa/whatever, they had fallen and been caught by Bumblebee, and he didn't know what all might have happened to her during Mission City.

The passenger door popped open invitingly, and she slid in with a small smile. "Thanks, Bumblebee," she said. "Now, if only all men were as chivalrous as you."

"Gee thanks," Sam said dryly, though he was smiling just a little, "you know, if I were like ... a living robocar, I would totally open my door for you."

"I'm sure you would," she said, arching one eyebrow entirely too high and putting an innuendo into the things he said that _so totally didn't belong there_! "Could we go grab a bite to eat? Or did you not bring any money?"

"No, I've got it," he said, waving the issue off as he mocked driving. He glanced over at the girl in the passenger seat, hesitantly asked, "so is this like ... serious or something?"

"Nah -- no," she said, glancing over. "It's just ... weird. And kind of silly."

"You're not backing out of this, are you? I mean, the thing with the Autobots. They kind of own us now."

"Don't remind me," she said dryly. "Though I was thinking about talking to Ratchet, you know ..."

He stared at her a little blankly, trying to imagine it. "You -- you want to drive a rescue Hummer?" he said a little strangely. It was just -- on one hand, Mikaela, driving a rescue Hummer and in some absurdly unreasonable rescue outfit ... on the other hand, Mikaela, in a Hummer at all. Just ... the effect that would have on the boys at school. Oh God. He imagined it would be something like the effect it had on _him_, but he thought her mechanical prowess was ... guh. Just the memory of the curve of her body, reaching under Bumblebee's hood, and -- guh. In a good way, that 'guh'. But still, how the boys would _react_ to Mikaela in a Hummer. And the jokes. Oh boy, the _jokes_ ...

"No," she said, looking at him strangely. "I meant -- mechanically. I do have some training as a mechanic, remember?"

"Oh," he said, a little relieved ... but not too much. "You mean, like ... being an assistant or something?"

"Yeah. Its a _lot_ more complex than anything I've touched -- cars really aren't all that hard to figure out, you know. It's just ... parts, gears ... but, I figured that their had to be _something_ I could do. I know how to replace wires and tubes and stuff. I'm sure he'll know what I can handle and can't. There's no way it's easy for one guy to try to repair all of those parts in so many other 'bots." She shrugged. "If I can't help out that way, then maybe I can help out the new arrivals find alt forms, you know?"

He bit his lip. Mikaela had it all planned out, and he hadn't really thought beyond himself and Bumblebee. "Wow," he said. "You know -- that's why they say that girls ... mature quick ... more quickly than guys."

She smirked. "Don't worry about it, Sam. Besides, we _are_ still going to school."

"Yeah," he said awkwardly, glancing away out the window. "Well, anyway, if it's not that, then what's this ... weird-silly thing you wanted to talk about?"

"Ah -- that, well ..." she settled back into the leather seat. "Could we wait until we get our food?"

"Yeah, sure," he said quickly.

They ended up at the Whattaburger. Unlike the Burger King, it made a habit of being pretty empty inside so that they could talk comfortably.

"A soda _and_ a milkshake? Is that some weird ... guy thing?" Mikaela asked, arching an eyebrow.

"No, no," he said absently, waving it off. "I've just been ... eating a lot since I got home. I think I lost weight during Mission city ... all that running around."

"Lucky," she grumbled, twisting off the cap of her water bottle.

The only conversation they made during the meal was idiotic small talk. It was ... strange that they had anything to make small talk about, but apparently he wasn't wrong when he said that there was more to Mikaela than meets the eye.

"No, no, _no way_," she laughed, waving her hands. "I'd sooner swallow motor oil than date Trent again. You know, I was only with him for his car, anyway."

"What?" he blurted out, laughing.

"Yeah," she said with a smirk. "That day I left and you picked me up? I was leaving because he didn't want me driving, and it was pretty obvious I probably wouldn't _ever_ be driving."

"I can't believe it."

"You'd better believe it," Mikaela said with such a pleased expression it was like a lioness licking her chops. "There was a pretty good reason I got in _your_ car, you know."

"Ouch," he said, holding a hand to his chest. "Well, I guess that's better than because you just needed a ride. I know how to pick a car."

"Really? Because I was under the impression that _Bumblebee_ knew how to pick a car," she teased.

"Bumblebee knows how to pick a _driver_," he corrected with an overly serious face. He broke it with a smile. "And if I recall correctly, _you_ called him a piece of crap."

"Yeah, but that means that it was because of me that you have that _really_ hot Camaro," she said, pointing out the window at him.

"It was because of my great-great-grandfather that I know _giant robot aliens_ exist," he corrected, taking a large bite out of his chicken sandwich thing.

"Ah --" she said, holding up her finger with a smug look, "_but_, Bumblebee could have easily been a vee-double-you Bug."

He choked on his sandwich and coughed roughly for several minutes. That was _so_ unfair. "Would you believe that the he dented in the door of one when the guy I bought him from tried to sell me that instead?"

She shot him a look of disbelief. "You're not serious?"

"Deadly," he assured her, grinning. "It was yellow, too. Then he blew out all the windows of the other cars. I swear I don't know how it missed my Dad's windshield."

"Wow," she said slowly, arching both eyebrows high. "That's ... commitment. Rash, too."

"It was awesome," he laughed. "I really wanted that car." She made a noncommittal humming noise. Sensing the change in mood, he finished his Coke and started on the milkshake. "Ready to talk about that ... weird-silly thing now?"

"Yeah," Mikaela said, avoiding his eyes as she sipped her water. "Listen, Sam ... I just wanted to get it out in the open. What I said during our first ride -- well, actually that was a lie, but meaning holds the same. I just don't want to ... lead you on or anything."

Sucking on the straw, he was silent as he let that sink in. To be perfectly honest, his feelings were more than a little mixed, and they weren't mild feelings either, but ... he had said that he really wanted something _simple_, and ... even if he wasn't the one making that decision, he didn't really want to be a jerk to Mikaela, either. "Kay," he said finally, keeping it short and sweet and his tone completely simple.

Mikaela seemed startled. "Really? Because, well -- um, you were pretty persistent."

"Yeah," he said dryly, "because no other teenaged boy is going to be persistent in trying to get your attention."

She laughed, mostly in relief. "Can you believe that I thought your awesome back flip off the bike was a stunt?"

He laughed -- partially because he wasn't sure he _wouldn't_ have attempted that if he had thought of it. "Seriously? Because that was so not awesome."

Shrugging, she said, "you never know. I've seen some pretty stupid stuff. It wasn't until you totally blew me off that I thought maybe you were ... hurt or in trouble or something."

"Yeah, well," he said, "I think you're safe from me for the foreseeable future. I mean ... I don't think I'm going to even _look_ at girls for a while. There's a lot of stuff going on, and ... injuries, and wow."

"Yeah," she agreed slowly. "That and ... you would be keeping secrets, you know? I'm pretty sure that no one else is going to get ... cleared to know about the Giant Walking Super Computers, and considering we ... 'belong' to them, or whatever ..."

He frowned. That had been something he hadn't even considered, yet -- but it was true, wasn't it? Not to mention that even if he _could_ find some pretty girl who was cleared to know about the Autobots ... a lot of people had a hard time accepting that they actually had morals, and thoughts and feelings of their own. They could feel pain, and be scared and --

Sam had to set the milkshake down, and he rubbed his hands on his pants, ignoring the way his fingers trembled so slightly that it couldn't be seen. He felt it, though ... he knew they existed, and he breathed carefully in an effort not to trigger some stronger reaction.

"Are you okay?"

He looked up sharply and saw Mikaela's face, soft with concern even as her dark blue eyes were intense, studying him. "Yeah," he rasped, and cleared his throat. "Fine. I was just -- well. I'm fine." Brushing a hand through his hair, he shook his head. "Yeah."

"Are you regretting it? This thing with _them_, I mean?" she asked, leaning forward a bit.

"Never," he said immediately. Was she kidding? The Autobots were -- he could never regret them and what he did for them. It was just -- "I just -- I _hate_ those guys," he said, and the words were so venomous, so intense that he startled himself.

"The Decepticons?" she asked in confusion.

"No, no, not them."

Her face lit with comprehension. "Sector Seven."

(_"Even if I could do it, I would __**never**__ do it for you!"_

_"That fine, Witwicky ... if we could steal the radiation once, we could do it again. It'll just be a little ... different, because you're not metal. That's all."_)

It wasn't hard at all to understand why even the name of those people would invoke such a reaction out of him, even though he breathed slowly and didn't react more than to grip the table. It had been _them_ who had intruded uninvited and kidnapped Sam and his family and _captured_ Bumblebee and _did such things_ and just -- _everything_!

Mikaela took a deep breath, and when she let it out she said, "oh, Sam," and leaned over further. "Listen to me; I understand. What they did was -- just ... it was _wrong_ and immoral and if you ask me," a sort of strength came into her voice and she sounded nearly as furious as he did when she finished with, "they should be _shot_." It was enough to startle him into looking at her, her gaze like the unforgiving grip of metal around his ribs. Then she softened a little, still stern but understanding as she said, "but don't, okay? I know a lot about hatred, and being furious with someone because they hurt me and, worse, they hurt someone I care about. So _listen_ to me when I tell you that you'll be a lot better off if you don't get worked up about it. What they did -- that was _horrible_. I had _nightmares_ about it. But all you're doing is hurting yourself when you hate them so much -- and you're letting them win. _Don't let them win_, Sam."

She sounded very much like she would never forgive him if he let them win. Whatever that meant.

"I don't know," he said with frustration, "I just don't know. I don't know if I can just -- let go like that. I tried to _tell_ them -- I tried, and they wouldn't listen!"

"Hey," she snapped sternly, "breathe. I know, Sam. I understand -- I was there. Just ... _breathe_."

He did. He had to. It wasn't because it was Mikaela telling him to, and it wasn't because the words were much more soothing than 'calm down' or 'chill out'. It was because -- well, there was something wrong with him. He knew it. A person like him didn't survive by being intense. His parents certainly didn't raise him to be intense. They were a relaxed family ... as hippy-ish as a family could be and still take showers every day (sometimes twice).

But ever since Sam had seen _the human race_ lasso down Bumblebee and _spray him with nitrogen_ and heard those _wails_ ... there was a nuclear reactor in his chest. It burned and seethed, and the only thing preventing a meltdown was his blood as it rushed furiously through that Chernobyl in his chest and carried the heat away. It was a closed circuit, though, so if that nuclear reaction kept on ... if it went on for too long, the blood was too hot to cool it and --

-- and. Well. Chernobyl. Three Mile Island. It was over. He didn't know what would happen but -- it couldn't be good.

"I know," he said, picking up his milkshake. His hand still trembled a little but he glared past Mikaela and sucked on the melting treat and tried to think of anything else. Anything else would do, and -- "So, um, you like cars," he said awkwardly.

She laughed lightly and sat back with a gentle tolerant smile. "Yeah, I like cars. Its ... in my blood, I guess," she joked awkwardly, like she wasn't sure if she should be referencing her father that way.

"Kinda like 'giant walking super computers' is in mine, huh?" he asked wryly. If she could reference her father, he could reference old Archibald.

With a satisfied look, she practically beamed. "Yeah, like that."

-+-

After dropping Mikaela off, having parted on good terms with laughs and smiles, Bumblebee took him back home. The ride was just long enough for Sam to stumble upon the thought that maybe now that Bumblebee had actually gotten a taste of being a chauffeur, he'd change his mind. Then he couldn't bring himself to ask just a few days after the first time he brought it up, as that just seemed ... weird, and annoying. Thankfully, his father came out of the house while Sam was sitting behind the wheel and debating what to do. Seeing that it was pretty clear he wanted to talk to his son, Sam climbed out and shut the door lightly, leaning his hip against Bumblebee's side for a moment before it occurred to him that Bumblebee might not like that and he jerked away as if the metal had burned him.

"Hey, Sam," his father said with distracted smile before he returned to ogling Bee.

Sam watched with some trepidation. Surely his father --?

"Do you think I could get one of these?" Ron asked, looking at Sam hopefully.

"_Dad_," Sam said, frowning slightly as he glanced around swiftly as if to make sure no one was paying attention. "They're not ... _toys_. They're people, you know -- or, ah, not _people_-people, they're aliens, but -- well, not _toys_."

"I know that," Ron said quickly, but continued to sort of eyeball Bumblebee as if he were a classic car model.

Without even _thinking_ about it, Sam's hand snapped out and his fingers pressed into the seam where the windshield met rubber and metal. "You can't have this one," he blurted, "this one's _mine_."

"Oh, of course, I know that," his father said, making a shooing dismissive gesture but not taking his eyes off the sleek yellow curves.

Narrowing his eyes, Sam watched his father warily. "Well?"

"Well ... I was just wondering ... " Ron finally tore his eyes away from Bumblebee and cast a speculative look back to where Sam knew the convertible was hiding.

(_" ... if we could steal the radiation once, we could do it again ..."_)

"No," Sam said fiercely. "It doesn't work like that -- _God_, Dad! Even if it _did_ --"

"No need to get your lines crossed," he sniffed before looking back at Bumblebee.

"_Stop ogling my car_," Sam said, still trying to imagine what it would be like to have _two_ giant alien robots hanging out around his house and only coming up with downed power lines and possibly fighting in the streets.

"You know," Ron said, a little seriously, "I paid for half of this car --"

"Yeah well -- a car chooses it's driver, so -- go eye up the convertible. _That_ is your car, you leave mine alone!"

"Yeah, yeah ... you sure there isn't another one somewhere that needs a home --?"

"Dad. There's a ... a rescue hummer that tore down the power lines, a truck that wanted to use the cannon on the house or on Mojo, and a Mack truck that stepped on the fountain. Is there _anyone_ you'd want at the house?"

Ron frowned. "I see what you mean." He threw a grievous look back at the house, remembering just how torn up everything had gotten. "At least the government reimbursed us ..." Then he cast another longing look at the Camaro. "Be like Knight Rider ..."

Sam had never watched Knight Rider, but from what he understood from walking by the living room while his father watched it, it was like ... Batman without the tights. "No, Dad," he sighed, resisting the urge to thump his forehead off of the roof. "Not like Knight Rider _at all_ ..."

Ron wasn't listening, walking back to the house and muttering to himself. "My _son _is living Knight Rider ..."

Incredulous, he stared after his father for a long moment. Was this some sort of weird mid-life crisis?

-+-

Going back to school on Monday was like ... well, it was a little like walking into the Twilight Zone, honestly. No one had _any clue_ that just a week ago, they could have been enslaved by the Decepticons and all of the Earth Technology could have been turned into little killer bastards like the Nokiabot ... though, honestly, Sam did have to wonder what Megatron would have done if the 'bots hadn't been able to tell the difference between 'friend' and foe. As amusing as it was to envision little iPods and Nokias ninja'ing Megatron's wires like Chihuahuas on steroids and speed, things had probably worked out for the best.

Considering that Sam had those sorts of mental images, was there really any question why he wasn't exactly thrilled to be going back to school?

"How are we supposed to relate to these people?" Mikaela asked, sitting back heavily against Bumblebee's seat, staring at the other teens wandering in the general direction of the school doors.

"No joke," he said dryly. "You know ... I didn't have the greatest motivation to do homework to begin with. Now it's going to _really_ be a joke."

"Tell me about it. And chemistry and physics? _Please_."

"On the other hand ... no better tutors, huh?" Sam patted the door and it obligingly popped open. "Thanks, Bee," he said, idly running a hand along the hood. "Here comes Miles."

Miles had a fairly obvious adverse reaction to seeing Mikaela slide out of Bumblebee. He actually stepped sideways about halfway to Sam, and very obviously avoided her like she had the plague as he sidled up next to Sam. "Dude," he hissed lowly. "You didn't mention the ee-jay-see! What's goin' _on_, dude?"

"Dude -- shut up," Sam said mildly. "Mikaela and I are friends now." Across the Camaro, Mikaela leaned forward and propped her arm on Bumblebee with a sarcastic little smile at Miles as he peered around Sam at her.

"_Friends_?" Miles demanded, straightening to stare at Sam incredulously. "No way -- how did _that_ happen?"

Sam rolled his eyes, shutting the door and stepping around his friend. "You remember when I called you about Satan's Camaro? I ran into Mikaela while I was having problems with it, and I picked her up to take something to Mission City. You can't just ... go on road trips and _not_ end up friends, Miles. Or be quarantined. Mikaela's actually pretty awesome, alright?"

"Dude, whatever!" Miles shot back, sending Mikaela suspicious looks. It was sort of like something on the discovery channel ... _and the adolescent male is disturbed by the appearance of the strange female. He isn't sure whether or not to defend his turf ... first, he must find out what she wants_ ... or something like that.

Yeah, Sam's brain was batting a thousand this morning. Ninja Nokiabots and his friends on the Discovery Channel. Wow. Maybe the wrong Witwicky had been put in the Psych' ward? Well, if the nightmare about that evil cop Decepitcon and his spastic little glitch continued for much longer, he would _definitely_ belong there. _Joy to the world~_ -- and he'd been hanging out with Bumblebee too long, who still favored the radio unless they were having a serious discussion like they had on the way home.

The school day itself wasn't that bad. Nothing big happened. All he had to do was mention Mission City and _"oh"_, everyone would say, _"was it true that the clean up caused hallucinogenic fumes and made everyone think that their cars came to life?"_ and because it was The Rules, Sam nodded sheepishly and said, _"Yeah, I totally thought this Mountain Dew machine grew legs."_ By lunch, no one cared any more. It just seemed so ... childish and unreal. He couldn't even be too terribly impressed with the football team or teachers or ... anything, really. His reality was giant sentient robots and intergalactic wars and the government and Mikaela and that Will guy who actually blew out one of them on his own, practically. High school ... with teachers and principals and councilors and jocks and idiots and the really gross food (but he was _starving_, so he ate it all anyway) was more like something out of some boring book that he read just to put him to sleep.

He was lucky he was able to _resist_ the urge. His desire to sleep forever hadn't faded with time. Even though he'd easily slept nearly sixteen hours the first day he was back, he continued to be exhausted and hot and tired and achy all over. At least his sore throat had abated after being home and allowed to drink as much water as he wanted ... even if his mother did force multi-vitamins on him, certain that he had some cold or flu he need to fight off. Taking three daily-MVs wasn't his idea of a good breakfast, but the soup was nice to settle his stomach. His dad was sure that anyone with his appetite couldn't be sick, but Mom thought that it was a sure sign something was wrong since he hadn't had such a 'teenage boy' appetite since he was fifteen and going through a growth spurt.

He figured the fussing was their way of dealing with the stress of their run-in with the government, and he didn't mind, either, so ...

So really, the only honestly interesting part of his day came _after school_, which was when Trent finally made a play for 'his' girl. He was waiting right in the way for the parking lot with his shiny new blue Hummer, propped against it like he was the most awesome thing since awesome was awesome. Which he obviously wasn't, since Sam had met awesome and he came in yellow and black.

"Hey, Bunny," he said with a cloyingly over-friendly tone, grinning at her that way that still made Sam want to knee him in the groin. Which was saying something, because he no longer wanted to date Mikaela and Sam was a firm believer in not striking below the belt when fighting a guy. "Where've you been?"

"God, Trent," Mikaela groaned in frustrated aggravation. "Seriously. Hasn't me ... _not_ calling you told you _anything_?"

"Come on," he cajoled. "Don't tell me you want to hang out with some loser?"

"You know -- you're right," she said earnestly. "I don't. So, I'm going to go hang out with Sam. And Miles," she added as an after thought. Miles looked scandalized and Sam shrugged, indicating that he wasn't going to object.

"Is this because I wouldn't let you drive my babe?" he demanded, frowning deeply now before trying to smooth it over. "Bunny, this is a very powerful vehicle. Does Wittiker let you drive _his_ car, is that it?"

Mikaela and Sam exchanged a look. Not even _Sam_ drove Sam's car. "You know, yes," she said, "the car has something to do with it -- but my _main_ problem with you, Trent? You just _don't_ understand that I'm - not - your - little - _bunny_. It's not even _that_ I'm objecting to! I object to _you_, Trent. You and your willingness to just fall into some stereotype that everyone expects out of you, and your attitude toward women in general! I might have even _understood_ it a little if you didn't treat me that way when we're alone, too! But -- whatever, you know? I'm not going to waste my time on _you_."

Sam had no idea it was even _possible_ for someone to say 'you' as if the word were a baby-eating rapist murderer. He let out a low whistle as she stormed by Trent and his Hummer, then figured he'd better hurry after her before Trent came out of his stupor of disbelief. "Geez, preach it, sister," he said.

Then Trent finally came to terms with the dressing down and turned. "Yeah, whatever, babe!" he shouted. "Come back when you're done getting an ego boost from those losers _worshiping_ you!"

Mikaela whipped around, and as she walked backwards, thrust both arms out and gave a dual one-finger salute. Sam kept a wary eye on Trent even after she turned back around, but he just got back into his Hummer and hit the gas, tearing out of the parking lot.

"You're so fucking awesome," Mikaela shouted sarcastically over the peeling tires, adding another salute to it. "_God_, that just burns me," she added under her breath before she turned to the boys. "He's not going to take that lying down, Sam," she said, still too angry not to lecture. "And he'll probably go after you, instead of me. And your car."

Mindful of Miles, he didn't spout about how his car could kick Trent's ass -- then realized that would probably be the exact wrong way to go ... what with that secrecy thing. "I'll look into some alarms and insurance," he said, instead. "Maybe some that would make dogs howl and burst some ear drums or something." He glanced back only to see Miles eyeballing Mikaela with something not unlike respect. Apparently, she was looking less like an Evil Jock Concubine and more like an Amazon Warrior Princess. _Welcome to the Real Mikaela_, Sam thought with humor.

"Guess what," Sam said brightly as they arrived at the Camaro. "Miles -- in the back. You can have shotgun after we drop off Mikaela."

"What!" he protested. "Dude, she can get in the back, especially if she's not going to be riding with us for a long time!"

"Miles," Sam said, leaning against Bumblebee a little. "It's my car. Back seat, or the bus -- it's your decision."

Miles visibly weighed the bus against the Camaro and decided that even the cramped back seat was better than the hot, sweaty school bus. "_Fine, fine_," he grumbled. "But we're hitting Sonic before home."

"Fine with me," Mikaela said slyly, smirking over the roof, sharp and predatory and her eyes dark and challenging. "Besides, with Sam's new appetite, he's probably _starving_ anyway," she threw out before the door popped open and she slid sleekly in like she _belonged_ there. Miles glowered angrily.

Sam scratched the back of his head and glanced back at the bus, trying to figure out if it was too late to back out of this weird turf-dispute that was going on. He decided to worry about it later, when his stomach _wasn't_ gurgling greedily.

-+-

After having an extremely tense after-school meal with his friends, which Sam survived by doing nothing by eating and ignoring all of the subtle by-play going on between Miles and Mikaela, he discovered that it was a fairly good thing that he wasn't having to drive. Thankfully, when he discovered this, his friends were too busy with growling over the Sam-bone to notice that the Sam-bone was having vision problems.

That wasn't even really it, he mused as he stepped _very_ carefully across the lawn toward the front porch. He could see fine. There was no blurriness, no black spots, or anything.

He was just ... having depth-perception problems. Like his brain couldn't properly measure that the step was four inches high and six inches deep. His head certainly didn't hurt. His vision didn't _look_ skewed -- other than being strangely flat. Both eyes were working identical.

He's just lost depth perception.

Sam worried over that for a while. Just around the time that his sore throat had eased with the help of his mother's strange hot teas and plenty of vitamin C (she swore by the stuff, Sam didn't know _why_), his vision started going all wonky.

It wasn't that bad. Sam was pretty familiar with everything -- his house, the school, Bumblebee -- so as long as he didn't try to move at his usual speed and _concentrated_, no one should even notice that he wasn't sure about distances. Which was why it was a _good_ thing that Bumblebee could drive himself, and usually did.

Maybe his nightmares were messing up his brain. If it wasn't something wrong with his eyes, or his reflexes, if the world looked flat -- that had to be his brain, right? What if they couldn't find anything wrong with his throat because there hadn't been anything wrong with his throat? What if it had all been in his head? He shouldn't be surprised, what if he was radiated, he'd been having those really _fucked up_ nightmares, and he was sleeping a lot --

What if there was a tumor in his _head_?

Sam scrubbed his skin feverishly -- not because he thought it was going to help with whatever was _wrong with his brain_, but because he didn't know what he was supposed to _do_. The burning hot water made his flesh tender, and the steam was thick and made it hard to breathe, and Sam scrubbed and scrubbed and then just crouched under the water and wrapped his arms over his head.

_Was he crazy? Was there even a tumor, or had he dreamed it all_?

The insane certainly didn't think they were crazy. There was _something wrong with his brain and he wanted it to stop_.

* * *

- My version of Miles may be ... um. Well. He's Sam's foil in all ways, so. Miles is Miles. Lolz.

- MIKAELA IN A HUMMER = OMFG~! (Yes, yes, I've fallen prey to "MEGAN FOX IS HOT" syndrome, but if they preach it at you long enough, you start to believe it.)

- Bumblebee should be happy Sam didn't come out of the house at night and spraypaint his name all over his hood. Or at least it sounds that way, to hear the territory despute that happened right there with his dad. Yeah.


	4. Nightmares

**Chapter Four : Nightmares**

Ninety-nine-point-nine-(et cetera, et cetera, for eternity) percent of the time, Sam would have rather taken on the Evil Cop Car and his spastic glitch buddy before he would have taken on Trent.

-+-

_Runrunrunrunrunrunbutthefloorwaswaterunderhisfeetand --_

_he was on the stairs and struggling up them but no matter how fast he tried to move he was slowslowslowslow and the stairs slipped and gripped at his feet and made him slower. Behind him, the fucking shark was coming out of the waterfloor and snapping it's teeth like some mechanical mousetrap snapsnapsnap as its tail thrashed and sent it sliding closer and closer and closer and deaddead staring black soulless eyes watched and laughed and that toothfilled grin. Then its teeth bleed and blood gushed and red flew as a hand reached out of those scarlet foaming jaws and _snap_ the head broke as that threatening silver arm protruded and he ranranran over quicksand steps to escape, All Spark clutched like a football, the only solid thing -- the only solid thing -- the only solid thing --_

_and he was on the roof and runningrunningrunning. "What drives you, fleshling? Fear or courage?" and he was runningrunningrunning -- _

_fallingfallingfalling_

_falling_

_fall_

_and there was no one to catch him, no Optimus Prime, no knight in golden armor, and he hit the ground and his ribs crackled as his body flattened and the blood was in his lungs and slivers of unnaturally white bone were sticking out of his chest like the back of a porcupine flesh hanging in stringy strips and the All Spark sat in his lap, dancing with blue energy and Megatron was falling toward him spread eagle and Sam didn't have a chance_.

Sometimes, you don't wake up before you die. Unfortunately, Sam was having a lot of these nightmares lately.

He laid in bed, staring at the red numbers informing him that it was three in the morning. After a moment, he rolled over and allowed his exhaustion to drag him back down -- but made a mental note to buy a new alarm clock.

-+-

Over the next week, they hammered out a functioning schedule. After school, Miles, Mikaela, and Sam went to Sonic to sit on the benches (none of them dared to think about eating in the Camaro because Miles _worshipped_ that car, Mikaela knew better, and Sam was squeamish enough just being organic without _eating_ inside the car), ate their meals, then dropped of Mikaela and Miles before Sam and Bumblebee would go to hang out in the part to sit under that big cottonwood tree. Sam would prop his back against a tire and do his homework while Bumblebee did was Bumblebee did -- listen to music or hit up the Internet or whatever.

Sam wasn't feeling brave enough to lay on the hood, even though he wanted to, and the interior really wasn't comfortable enough to do homework in.

"You sure you're not cramped or anything, stuck as a car?" he asked after he realized he'd been staring at the same problem without actually seeing it for the last thirty minutes. The vague strings of music coming from inside the Camaro was calming, but things could be said for being _too_ calming.

"I've had a lot of practice," Bumblebee assured him wryly. The voice seemed to come from around the engine, but he wasn't exactly going to go _looking_ for it. He wasn't sure if checking under the hood would be more like a dentist checking things out, or looking under a girl's skirt. (Not that there was anything _feminine_ about Bee, just that -- well, it was the only comparison he could make to hint at just how weird and intrusive it seemed.)

"Oh?" Sam asked, perking up a bit. He wiggled and shifted, trying to find a way to prop himself against Bumblebee and be able to 'face' him at the same time. It made sense: Bumblebee surely hadn't just appeared that day at the car lot. "How much practice?"

The car shifted against him, which was such a strange sensation that he started a little, at least until the wheel carefully turned so that he could rest against it and face Bumblebee more fully. "I have been on Earth for nearly five years now, nearly all of which was spent in my alt mode. Besides, it's more comfortable not to shift form while still healing."

Sam grimaced sympathetically. His ribs were still bothering him, so he understood not wanting to move in strange ways. "What about driving about?"

"Driving is fine," he assured, but there was something -- something wrong. A pause? An _inflection_? All Sam knew was that it meant --

-- he was struggling to his feet and trying desperately to remember where the different car parts slid. It was useless -- he could remember that the front of the car was Bumblebee's chest, and the doors formed these ... wings, but he was at a loss for the rest. "I bet it doesn't do you any favors," he said flatly, eyes narrowed. And here he'd been, driving his friends around and going to the park --! Sam ground the heel of his palm against his forehead, sighing heavily. He was such an _idiot_!

"It doesn't do any harm," Bumblebee said, sounding rather touchy.

"Jesus, Bee!" Sam burst out, managing to keep his level down but not his anger. "I should --" he drew back his foot as if to kick the tire he'd been leaning against, but knew better, so instead he just turned away and stomped off a few paces. Then he felt bad about threatening to kick his car and felt like an even _bigger_ jerk. His parents had _taught_ him better than to react to anger. His entire life had been one long exercise in channeling anger, frustration, and all of that into something better, and now he was spitting in the face of that and being a jerk to his -- guardian. Friend? Well, anyway.

He came slinking back toward the silent Autobot, feeling as though if he had a tail, it'd be tucked firmly between his legs. "Listen," he mumbled, not quite able to look at the yellow Camaro, "I'm just pissed because I -- I'm stupid and I didn't realize this on my own. And I should have." He shoved a hand roughly back over his skull, where he'd used to have longer hair before it became too insufferably hot to have more than the short cut he had now.

There were a few audible clicks inside the Camaro -- what he supposed was the same as a person crossing their arms and looking at him. Then, finally, Bumblebee said: "You have to trust me to know my limits; I trust you to know yours, even though you are exhibiting worrisome behaviors."

"Oh yeah?" Sam barked loudly, getting the feeling he was interrupting Bee but feeling righteous about it. "Well -- you don't exhibit any behaviors at all!"

"I assure you," Bumblebee said, sounding remarkably dry, "I am exhibiting plenty of behaviors. I can make it obvious when I don't like something, but it's interesting to listen to what the three of you talk about -- and it's peaceful coming here. I spent much of my time on Earth searching for the Witwicky family, so I didn't have time to -- 'smell the roses'. Besides, I am far past receiving even false positives for pain."

Some strange tenseness in Sam released, like it was more than just air leaving him as he slowly exhaled. A part of him was thinking that it was amusing that Bumblebee was so uncomfortable using metaphors, and that he must have researched something that said that humans did it, so he was trying to do it as well. On his next breath, a warmth different from that damning Chernobyl settled into his chest; it was better, more comfortable, and he felt awkward and silly for having jumped to conclusions, and even the tightness in his ribs seemed to lessen. "Yeah, well," he said with a crooked smile, "I really like coming here, too." For some reason, he wanted to add: _with you_. It was stupid, because that was the specific reason he'd asked for Bumblebee to drive him here -- to spend some time with his guardian. To ... become his friend. He spent a lot of time with Miles and Mikaela, so it only seemed right to try to cement some sort of friendship between Bumblebee and himself by immediately following it up with some one-on-one with him. "So -- er, you wanna stay longer, or go home?"

The door popped up, and the music he hadn't realized had turned off cranked up to a more comfortable listening level. Bumblebee didn't always use lyrics to communicate. He seemed to like the strangest music, anyway.

Sam grimaced. "Yeah, you're right." He scurried around the front of the car, picking up his discarded homework before he slid into the soft leather seat. As they pulled out of the park's lot and rolled off toward the road, Sam licked his lips nervously. Even though they had pretty much settled that strange little disagreement, Sam still felt ... silly about his reaction. He wanted to ...

_I've just been having these nightmares lately. It's made me excitable._ Excuses. _I just keep seeing you guys carrying the parts of Jazz's body_ -- no, he could _never_ bring that up. _There's something wrong with me. I can't remember Sector Seven hurting you without wanting to go Decepticon. I should have known you were hurt; I feel like I'm no better than they were_.

True, but not exactly something you should admit to the opposite faction of the war. God -- S-7 made him want to let Megatron win.

Though really, it did no good to get worked up about it all. He braced his arm on the car door and set his knuckle against the glass, idly drawing patterns -- and the car jerked and the volume sky-rocketed into a short blare as Sam flailed a bit in surprise, gripping the steering wheel and the side of his seat in alarm. The radio overcorrected after the blare, falling silent except some strange clinking-clicking noise. Sam shot the radio a strange look.

"What the hell was that?" he demanded, somehow sure that he had missed the booming sound of explosion of an attack.

There was a definite sense of embarrassment to the interior of the car. Very slowly, the volume dial turned, trying to 'sneakily' return to a more normal level.

Sam boggled at the strange behavior for a moment before a suspicion formed in his brain."You can feel that? On the _window_?" he demanded. No sooner had the words left his mouth that his suspicion fully flowered. "Are you _ticklish_?" he demanded, remembering those clinks and wondering if he'd just heard the Autobot equivalent of a giggle.

A series of radio blurbs and a few recognizable TV quotes sputtered out of the radio, all assuring Sam that there was _no_ possible way that Bumblebee was ticklish, because that was the most absurd idea to have occurred since people thought the four humors had anything to do with illness and health, and believing it was totally equivalent of believing in the Loch Ness Monster.

"Really?" Sam said with a politely disbelieving expression. He lifted both hands, curling threateningly, and said, "So if I ...?" Unfortunately for Bumblebee, Sam had spent some time around Miles' family, and Miles had a niece who loved to bother Miles and Sam, but hated to be tickled. Sam, therefore, had learned how to be a _tickle master_.

There was something so completely absurd and yet absolutely hilarious about tickling a giant robot that Sam was grinning like the loon he was as he slid his fingertips across the glass, tapping and scratching his nails against it. The radio made a staticy squealing noise (nothing like those horrible wails that haunted him), and he gleefully dropped a hand to the door, just below the handle, scratching there, too. Bumblebee was making some _fascinating_ noises and he was just trying to figure out if it was worth the possibility of a crash to try to get his foot to the other door when a song came on loud enough to make his ears throb.

_"I've got no secrets, I give myself away! I've got no secrets -- and I give my whole --"_

Sam was very sorry that he'd had to stop tickling Bumblebee, but the volume had been crawling up steadily that even that small snippet had gotten so loud that he'd been forced to clamp his hands over his ears. Thankfully, the moment he'd taken his hands away, Bumblebee shut up. Oh well, that lyric sounded a lot like 'Uncle' to him, anyway. The radio dial was busily spinning around, and finally it sulkily became to play some song that Sam wasn't familiar with, but it certainly didn't sound friendly. _"Oh, the brilliant mistakes that you seem to make always push me away ... and now you're steppin' on my feet -- stepping on my feet cause you were never on my side ..."_

His car was _pouting_. Oh boy.

"Right," he said, "Hands off the windows. Got it."

-+-

Along with the newly worked out schedule came a certain amount of acceptance between Miles and Mikaela ... eventually. Miles wasn't accustomed to socializing with girls who weren't his mother or a girlfriend, so he was never really sure how to react to Mikaela. Sam sympathized, to a point. Luckily, Sam was there to translate Miles' secret Internet language ... or share a clueless look with Mikaela when Miles spouted something too obscure for Sam's second-hand knowledge to do any good.

So understandably, it took a few weeks for Mikaela to stop being put off by Miles ADHD ridden spontaneity, and for Miles to learn what was acceptable to do and say around a female friend. After that, though, things started moving smoothly and a little bit of Sam's hounding sense of _not-enough-time_ eased. It helped that while Mikaela and Miles were still feeling out this new friendship-triad, _other_ things were going well. Namely, Bumblebee.

Or he thought they were going well. They _seemed_ to be going well. Bumblebee loved his music, and Sam slowly learned to tell when Bumblebee was _saying_ something with it, and when he was just sharing a song, for whatever reason. It wasn't as easy as it sounded. Bumblebee was more playful than was good for Sam's health sometimes, considering what his idea of a 'joke' was. Between episodes of suddenly taking off in strange directions, pretending to have a flat, and driving on the neighbors' lawns at night, they had a few serious discussions, for which Bumblebee used his voice even if he played music at the same time.

He thought they might be well on their way to being friends. It was what he wanted. Bumblebee had cut down on the number of 'redirection' attempts he made when Sam engaged in some sort of 'friendship building' exercise. Perhaps Bumblebee couldn't deny the bonds that battle built, either.

Or maybe Sam was just relentlessly hounding Bumblebee for some sense of reality because his nightmares had gotten worse and he didn't know who to turn to and Bumblebee had already seen him have one before and _--_

_-- fallingfallingfalling and in mid air the cube was doing that blue electric thing it did when Bumblebee shrunk it -- and it was disappearing_ into his hands _and then Optimus was catching him and they were tumblingtumblingtumbling and those big blue optics were looking at him and Optimus said, "Sam, what have you_ _**done**__?"_

(That nightmare would be one that he loathed most of all. It was more than just Optimus Prime's disbelief and hopeless horror at the All Spark being absorbed into Sam in those words ... it was also because -- before he fell, Sector Seven was offering Megatron Bumblebee on a platter and it's _Bumblebee_ who was ripped in half and when he woke he felt like throwing up because he was _grateful_ it was Jazz who died and the relief and the self hatred and disgust are hard to swallow down.

... maybe Optimus was accusing him of that, too.)

_-- or maybe he was shoving the All Spark at Megatron, just aiming it, targeting the giant silver mech as a virus in the system -- and instead of dying, he laughs and laugh and laughs, because it's absorbed into _him_, instead._

When that nightmare goes well, he dies. When it doesn't, pet isn't the least of it and no one that Sam knew died quickly. Cataloguing their own methods of breaking themselves and putting it on the _Internet_ was perhaps the worst idea that Humanity ever had.

-+-

Trent DeMarco was on average well over six feet in height, packing at least two hundred pounds of muscle, with six hundred pounds of backup in the shape of his friends. Now, these measurements may or may not be completely correct, but considering that many thing about humans and their abilities came down to mind over matter -- the fact that Sam's mind was convinced that these measurements were honest-to-God truth meant that they may as well have been. Ninety-nine-point-nine-(et cetera, et cetera, for eternity) percent of the time, Sam would have rather taken on the Evil Cop Car and his spastic glitch buddy before he would have taken on Trent.

Not Megatron, though ... no one would be fool enough to rather take on Megatron than _anything_.

So, basically, the probability of Sam choosing to get into a confrontation -- verbal, physical, or what have you -- was not impossible, but it was so improbable that it might as well have been. Everyone knew it. It was part of the reason why Sam turned up to do things like 'climb this tree'.

It was probably why when he swung his backpack into Trent's face, it actually knocked him back and almost off his feet. Mikaela was shrieking in the background, and he could hear the thundering of sneakers on asphalt as they charged after him, but he'd reacted much too fast ... ran too fast, that it was over before they'd caught up. "You touch my car and _I'll kill you_!" he snarled at the stumbling jock, fist clenched and Chernobyl blaring a warning in his chest -- _meltdown inevitable_. Whether his blood was boiling or had become acid or _molten metal_ didn't matter because it was painful all the same and it _goaded him on_ and he wanted to _throw himself at Trent_ and tear him limb from limb and maybe that would make things okay -- maybe _that_ would kill the reactor in his chest, _but best of all: he wouldn't be able to hurt Bumblebee._

"Sam! No, Sam! Stop!" Mikaela yelled as she grabbed his arm, finally in reach. She tugged him backwards -- not too powerfully, but a gentle insistent pressure that made him give way and allow his shifting steps to go backwards.

But he didn't want her to touch him, honestly. He didn't want to be _touched_, or _restrained_, but he didn't dare twisted away from her ... through the thick haze of rage, he knew that she could hurt him and probably would. Instead, he ignored her, stabbing out an accusing finger and every muscle coiled as he stared down the trembling length of his arm. "Watch it, Trent," he said softly, eyes locked with incredulous blue and words filled with _so_ much venom that it burnt his tongue just as Chernobyl was hollowing his chest and _consuming_ him. "You _touch_ my car, and you will regret it. I _promise_ you, you - will - regret it."

"Jesus Christ, Wicky," Trent said, backing away and still fondling his face for damage. "You're -- _fucking psychotic_, damn."

"Then you don't want to piss me off, do you?" he demanded, every last scrap of his attention focused on the retreating boy. The more space that was put between Trent and Bumblebee, the more Sam relaxed, shoulders unwinding and his hand dropping. Chernobyl roiled and tongue still burning, he continued: "You have a problem with me, DeMarco? You can work it out with me -- but if you so much as _look_ at that Camaro wrong ... oh, boy, I have a lot of issues I'd _love_ to work out on you."

"Come on, Sam," Mikaela softly, tugging on him just barely. "Breathe, okay? Breathe."

He probably hadn't been the first enraged male she'd had to talk down, because she knew what she was doing. Though every inch of him was on _fire_, electrified -- and the world was sharp and colors never more vivid -- he was gaining control of himself. Everything had seemed so bright and glassy in that instant, as if there were too much light in a camera and everything faded to white, but Sam kept breathing just as Mikaela told him. Trent was backing off, and let him mutter insults if he wanted, it didn't change that he'd _lost_. Let him say that Sam belonged in an asylum, or anything he wanted to say. Sam didn't care -- he'd come to that conclusion a week after killing a giant robot from outer space.

It was a bit like an ember escaped from a fire, thrown carelessly and fragile into the air, burning out and empty and fading to gray. His heart slowed, Chernobyl didn't have a meltdown, the venom ebbed away, the chemical bite fading.

In the background, Miles whistled hesitantly. "Man, Sam ... way to go."

"Don't encourage him!" Mikaela snapped, incised, releasing Sam to glower at Miles. "Sam already has _enough_ issues with people wanting to hurt Bu -- his car, and he doesn't need egging on!"

Feeling a little weak and empty, he shook his head. "Don't fight," he groaned, stepping away to retrieve his backpack from where it sat innocently on the ground where he dropped it. "Just don't. I don't think I can handle it after seeing that jerk and his jingly keys."

Before now, he always figured that 'heart in the mouth' was nothing more than some elaborate flowery phrase ... but he had understood it then, when he stepped out of the school building and looked out across the parking lot, an there was all six plus feet of jock standing there and flashing his jingling keys with a mockingly bright grin. And then he lowered them, changing his grip -- perfect to apply pressure. On hindsight, there was no way that Trent would have done it that way, not if he really meant to do it, but ... Sam hadn't been in any condition to reason. Chernobyl had just begun to rage with the speed of a bomb exploding, as if it were suddenly trying to power the entire world, and everything had gone glassy-bright and _focused_. He had been running before he had even really had a chance to envision the keys digging into Bumblebee's armor.

There was definitely something wrong with him.

"People have been trying to mess up his car?" Miles demanded, looking scandalized.

"You'd be surprised," Mikaela said flatly.

Sam barely even heard them, backpack hanging from his too-tight grip and watching after Trent, who had turned his back finally. He could probably chase him down -- could, feeling the grind of loose rocks between his shoe and the asphalt, might. Maybe he could chase him down on foot, but it sounded much more appealing to do so with Bumblebee, or maybe with an inanimate car instead, since it wouldn't get in trouble for harming humans.

"Sam. _Sam_!"

He jerked slightly and looked at Mikaela, her brow knitted together.

"Sam," she repeated seriously, "I thought we talked about this. You're going to hurt yourself if you let yourself get so worked up."

It wasn't what he wanted to hear, and his tone showed it: hard, unfriendly, _prickly_, as he said, "yeah, well, I -- it's my fault, okay? My problem." It was impossible to explain _why_, he just knew it was. He felt -- responsible for the Autobots. Responsible for both what they did and what was done to them ... and he was terrified that something terrible was going to happen. How in the world could he explain what strange things the Chernobyl in his chest was powered by? It was impossible to put into words. All he knew was the moment that Bumblebee had been under threat by Trent ... even if Trent couldn't _seriously_ harm the Autobot --

There was something wrong with him.

"Sam," Mikaela said commandingly. "Listen to me, it's not your fault. None of it is. Not this -- not what happened ... before."

"Yeah," he said, because he was pretty sure she wouldn't understand, mostly because he didn't have the words to explain, and partially because it wasn't all that logical. Or at least he was pretty sure that it wouldn't make much sense, if he could verbalize it anyway. "You're right, Mikaela," he added. "Let's go."

Under the surprised and watchful eyes of the other students who had caught the confrontation, the three of them got in the car and Sam forced himself to pretend to drive. He definitely wasn't in the mood to do it, but after a while he sunk into the habit and by the time that they dropped Mikaela off, he was mostly back to something resembling normality. They were perhaps half way to Miles' house before he spoke up.

"So ... dude, what happened before?" he asked, sounding a little awkward to be asking it.

It brought it all back, and all of the slight relaxing that Sam had done went out the window. Finally, he mustered up a jerk of the head, then added, "nothing, Miles. Seriously," when it seemed that the gesture wouldn't be enough.

Miles looked at him incredulously. "That did _not_ look like nothing -- that didn't even _sound_ like nothing, Sam. I totally approve of the backpack to the face, but ... that wasn't like you at all."

"Yeah," Sam said, not any louder than he had before, but somehow it was sharp and final. "Well, things change. Okay?"

His best (human) friend looked away as if he was embarrassed to see something. Although Sam didn't once take his eyes from the road, he could still _feel_ the way Miles turned things over in his head and built himself up to speak again, even after such a reaction. "I ... don't blame you, I'd be pretty pissed about some jock trying to key up my ride if it was this sweet. But ... DeMarco was right. You were pretty ... crazy."

His jaw flexed, teeth clenched and grinding together slightly. "I can't explain it," he said, then grimaced with remembered rage, "he shouldn't have brought Bee into it."

Miles nearly _audibly_ argued it out with himself, the silence as delicate as cotton candy. "If I remember," he said tentatively, "dude, _Mikaela_ brought your car into it."

How could he still have the strength to be so furious? "I don't care," he said with a voice gone flat with hostility. "He shouldn't have dared. If he wanted to have a problem with Mikaela or me, he should have come to _us_. _God_, how childish can you be?!"

"Dude, okay, okay, fine. I'm not saying anything. Just, maybe you should take up boxing or something. I don't remember you ever being this angry."

Sam studied his hands on the wheel through a film of rage, and continued to look at them until his white knuckles eased and his vision cleared. It was true, and he'd been thinking it himself -- that he had never been as angry as he was right now. He had never been so ... never. And because one friendship was old as years and the other was just in it's beginning, he felt forced to explain to both. "Yeah," he said, "well, a lot more happened than just the ... ... terrorist attack. Some stuff went on before the Mountain Dew machines that really messed me up, okay?" Trying to say: _When I saw what they did to you, Bumblebee -- that was it. I wanted to kill them all. That's what messed me up_. And he didn't know if the message was received, but they were in front of Miles' house and if he was going to say anything, he had to say it _now_. "I'm trying to work through it, alright? I -- _don't_ want to talk about it."

Miles looked at him, meeting his eyes seriously. "Yeah, man, whatever," he said, "it's cool, okay? Just ..." He opened the door and swung his legs out before he added, "Mikaela had some good advice. Don't let this get to you, alright?"

"Yeah," Sam said as Miles stood and closed the door. "I'll keep that in mind."

-+-

But it wasn't just what they did to Bumblebee. Sam had a big heart, but even the most compassionate person couldn't hate S7 as much as he did because of things done to someone else.

Even though he doesn't dream about it, he remembered every second of it, just in the back of his mind ... six-by-six-by-six and clear as day except for the condensation that built as his breath billowed in frigid air. Metal floor, cold as ice or death or worse under his bare feet, dressed only in cotton pajamas like it's just some sort of twisted sleep over. As if the cold would affect him like it had Megatron. And whatever it was that they would put in the cage so that he woke up strapped down with the needles they stuck into him --

Simmons' mockingly benign face behind glass as people dressed in lead shuffled. "That's fine, Witwicky ... if we could steal the radiation once, we could do it again. It'll just be a little ... different, because you're not metal. That's all."

Standing not even an inch from the glass wall, hands splayed and his forehead resting against the aching joints of his fingers, staring at the back of the man's head as he walked away freely, staring from between the gap between ring and pinky fingers, the tightness of his neck as he slowly twisted his head, as if looking at it from another angle would make it make more sense.

_How the soldiers had held their gun on him when they found him and brought him back to the government._

Sam already wanted to kill them all, and it was impossible to say that he wanted to kill them deader than dead ... but he did.

-+-

Sam _wanted_ to go home. Bumblebee had other ideas.

He sat stiff and uncertain in the seat as they rolled up to the park. He wasn't sure if even _Bumblebee_ was going to reproach him for his attitude, or if the Autobot simply wanted him to chill out. A part of him wanted it to be that Bumblebee naturally assumed that Sam always had time for him come Hell or high water, but a lot of him highly doubted that it had anything to do with it. The engine turned off with a twist of the ignition that was completely unnecessary and disturbingly final. Sam's heart gave a hard and painful thump in his chest, and he sat uncomfortably in silence for several moments, waiting for words or music that didn't come.

Some time after that, his mind began to uneasily turn back to a few hours prior. While he couldn't actually _regret_ slinging his backpack into Trent's ugly mug for even _jesting_ about keying Bumblebee, he certainly wasn't proud of his behavior during the confrontation or afterward. He had enough of Trent's stupid aggression, he was _tired_ of the nightmares, and he was flatly enraged by the idea of someone attacking Bumblebee.

Which put him in a very unfortunate position, considering the fact that the Autobot was exactly that -- someone on one side of a recently halted intergalactic war, though with guys out there like the Decepticons, Sam seriously doubted all of the fighting was over. There was always someone with a bone to pick and perhaps they'd find something new to start a war about. In either case, Bumblebee would be out fighting others like him, probably even larger than that cop car Decepticon.

Bumblebee finally broke him out of his dark thoughts with a carefully neutral tone as he said: "I could have tolerated a few scratches. It would have taken more power than a human's arm could exert to damage my alloy."

"Well -- good," he said sharply, feeling even more like an idiot than usual. It certainly made sense, though. "I _know_ I overreacted, okay? I just -- I overreacted. Fine. But he had _no right_ to go after you! You had nothing to do with any of that, and I certainly didn't go after _his_ stupid Hummer."

"It appears to be a part of your nature to attack the prized possessions of another."

"But that's it -- you're not a -- a _thing_, you're my _friend_, and Trent gets it in his stupid head to try to _hurt you_ -- I just --" his hands clenched, and he shut his jaw tightly, unwilling to repeat his original threat: _"... I'll kill you!"_ But he meant it with a whole-hearted vicious and very _serious_ way.

"I honestly doubt that anything this Trent could do would seriously injure me in anyway," Bumblebee said oh-so-reasonably. "Though we mimicked glass for our disguises, I suspect he would find it very difficult to break. We're excellent mimics, Sam; just because we appear to be cars hardly means we're as vulnerable as one. While not invincible to human technology, it would require specialized equipment to incapacity or cause injury."

God, Sam wished he hadn't brought _that_ up. Not when Chernobyl had just been burning hours earlier, not while it was threatening to resurface, and at those words he made some uncontrollable animal noise, and fought to escape the alien metal trap. It had to be surprise -- or his nails on the interior -- but the handle gave under his fingers and he shot from the cab as quickly as he could -- and though he didn't run, his sneakered feet hit the rough pavement with furiously loud noise. He swung furiously, striking out at something that didn't exist, and had to stumble to remain on his feet.

"I hate them!" he shouted passionately into the silent air. The park was never occupied around this time, and if it wasn't in the full view of the road, he was sure that junkies or kids playing hooky would hang out there. "I hate them," he repeated, with less volume but no less fervor. "I hate his smug ugly look, and I hate their stupid fear and their fucking helicopters and their _canned fucking ice_ and I hate how they made that Nokia phone come to life and then just _killed it_! I hate them!" Something _wrenched_ inside of him as he remembered it again -- the frantic vicious Nokia, Bumblebee's horrible wails ... and how he had been so frantic for Bumblebee not to kill anyone so that he could just get them out of there. He hated that everywhere he looked, he was seeing parts of Megatron, and he hated how they _raped_ the All Spark and then _killed_ it's children (it was a travesty that all of those carelessly created and slaughtered little sparks were the last children the All Spark ever had), and --

-- and he hated that they did all of those _abominable_ things, and no one could _do_ anything to them, the Autobots couldn't _retaliate_ without making the entire world panic. It made him _sick_!

Sam clutched his chest, uncertain if the wrenching pain was emotional or if he was really having a heart attack -- and couldn't really bring himself to care. "I hate them," he repeated, like a mantra that was supposed to calm him (he supposed it did). "I hate them. _God_, what were they thinking! Did they really believe that they could keep something like _Megatron_ silent forever? They were playing God and they didn't even understand that what they were doing was wrong! Power mad sunava_bitch_ ..." Finally, he felt completely hollow, completely burned out by the nuclear reaction in his chest, and let his legs fold until he was sitting on the parking lot.

Almost uncertainly, a little of the strange distance that normally flavored Bumblebee's voice (as if he were still uncomfortable using it) was absent when he said: "It's perfectly normal to save up distress and express it once it is 'safe' to do so, Sam."

Nearly uncontrollably (but not quite), he laughed. It sounded a little weird, a little waterlogged, a little twisted (a little broken). "It's not PTSD, Bee. _God,_ I hate them. You know, I don't think I could ever think that Humanity wasn't worth saving, because there are kids and people who have nothing to do with this, and actually good people -- but I wish there was some way to get rid of the bad kind. I wish there was some way to tell, so that we could get rid of them."

At some point in his bitter and rather disturbing soliloquy, Bumblebee snuck up on him, because Sam started rather violently when something nudged his back and it turned out to be the yellow bumper. Now, he could sense the engine humming so quietly he couldn't actually _hear_ it. Once he realized that, he leaned back a little, then turned sideways so that he could rest against it like a supportive shoulder, taking a deep breath. If he listed very carefully, he thought he could actually hear the quiet motor working.

Slowly, Bumblebee began to speak, sounding a little strange, without that distance that was normally in his voice: "thing are rarely ever so clear cut, Sam. It's easy as long as each side is wearing a different symbol ... a different uniform. But the unfortunate thing is that there will always be people wearing the wrong symbol -- Decepticons that should have been Autobots, and Autobots who believe in Megatron's cause more than Optimus Prime's. And with Humanity, its even less organized ... those you would consider the 'Decepticons' of your species or society ... I don't like what happened, but I don't hold it against them, either. You are ... different. Humanity never pretended that they are not afraid of what they don't understand, or what is unlike them. You even have a word for it."

The metal under his cheek felt warm and as if it were vibrating just barely, though the engine didn't seem to be going powerfully enough to cause any of it. "Yeah: xenophobia," he said; it was hard not to know those sorts of words. Miles was a total Alien nut, with the Sigourney Weaver and the Xenomorphs. It had been idle curiosity that had led to the research about xenophobia. "But," he added, sitting up and placing his hand on the bumper, "we have the opposite for that word, too."

The engine hummed. "Yes," Bee agreed simply, "you do."

-+-

There were nightmares, and then there were nightmares. Sam had little empathy for people who had nightmares because he was sleeping nearly twelve hours a night, and experiencing Silent Hill style horror for all of it. There was no relief, no breaks in the constant terror and gore. From the moment that Decepticon masquerading as a police car had threatened to run him over and showed off those horrific mockeries of a blender's blades, Sam had starting having nightmares, and once he had something to back it up (such as Mission City), it only got worse. So he regularly woke up to his alarm clock, typically unable to escape the nightmare before then, sort of shaky and in need of a nice hot shower to keep all of his muscles from locking up on him.

Ironically enough, it was after his talk with Bumblebee that his nightmares took on a more disturbing turn.

How he reached the whole _point_ of the 'dream' was different, as was the ending before he woke up, but the theme held true each time. He always ended up in the cab of one Cybertronian or another, and they transformed into their bipedal mode while he was _still inside_. Sometimes it was an Autobot who forgot that he was hiding inside them, and sometimes it was a Decepticon who did it _on purpose_.

Somehow, he remained aware of the entire thing, becoming conscious of the way the entire process worked. It was like his blood and broken bones and rent flesh could somehow transmit information back to his spattered brains, informing him that _this_ part shifts _here_ while _that_ one is clicking in place _there_. And though he had grown accustomed to falling back to sleep after horrific nightmares, _that_ sort of thing wasn't so easily brushed off, so he laid silently in bed, staring at the calming blue numbers as they slowly added up to daylight.

No one noticed that he was suffering a new type of horror (feeling the pressure and the crackle snap and _pop_), or that for the last week, he always had to hesitate for a moment to gather his courage ... how he swallowed a little and had to scrub his damp palms against his jeans before getting into the Camaro. Well, mostly no one noticed. Bumblebee _definitely_ noticed, which was one thing that Sam hadn't been able to figure out how to avoid. As he _had_ noticed, he seemed to feel it was up to him to discover the root of whatever was that was driving Sam up the figurative wall, and as fearless as the (relatively) small and upbeat Autobot he was, he took Sam to task. With locked doors and everything.

Never let it be said that (comparatively) small yellow robots didn't have ways of getting their points across.

In either case, Sam felt this was completely unfair and it took him three hours of listening to incomprehensible fast-talking Asian music (which Bumblebee later swore was J-Pop, received through an online radio channel) before he cracked. Reluctantly confiding his most recent nightmares to Bumblebee, Sam spent another thirty minutes assuring him that he didn't think that Bumblebee would ever do something like that to him. As a matter of fact, none of his nightmares had included Bumblebee, and considering that Sam never planned on climbing inside any other giant alien robot, that seemed to make the point -- well, _pointless_.

For the rest of the day, Sam was seized by the need to sing a song with words he couldn't even _pronounce_, but it was all worth it and a sweet relief from the constant horror of sleeping when he finally _dreamed_.

-+-

_Sam rolled out of bed, relieved at having slept through the night. Strangely enough, it was dark outside. He puttered around the room, then picked up the All Spark from where it sat waiting on his nightstand and jogged downstairs where his parents were watching TV, getting liquored up as usual. _

_"Goin' to hang out with Bee," he said as greeting and farewell. _

_"Oh! Optimus Prime called," his mother said leaning over with that concerned look on her face. "He wants you to pick up some oil at the store."_

_He pondered over whether Optimus meant vegetable oil or motor oil (and if the second, which would be best to buy, it might be like a sports drink or something), then decided to get both just in case. "Got it, Mom," he said, adjusting his grip on the All Spark so that his hands were equally on both sides and it was pressed against his stomach. When he left the house, Bumblebee wasn't there, but this didn't perturb him. He walked down the path to the street and began walking down the middle. It was dark and silent, and no breeze was blowing. The air was moist and warm, and the street lamps lit splotches of orange and blue. _

_The All Spark was so warm under his palms. Warmer than the hot air of the night, so hot it nearly burned -- but it didn't. He didn't even think to let go. After a moment, he registered the soft whirl-click of Cybertronian gears behind him. _

_"I'm going to the store," he said, but there was no answer. _

_He walked through the night with a mechanical shadow at his heels._

* * *

- There was some craaaazy time skipping, beginning in this chapter.

- OLD ISSUES: Sam overreacts like a PTSD person, cos he is. His vision was recalibrating, and he never noticed it resolve itself overnight. Megatron's line in the dream is indeed wrong.

- Songs in order of appearance: ("No Secrets" - The Exies), ("The Shake (Awful Feeling)" - My American Heart)  
- - The "No Secrets" lyric goes like this: _I have no secrets, I give myself away; I have no secrets, and I give my whole existance to you_. It's not very relevant except for the squealing Bee/Sam fangirl in everyone, even though Bumblebee didn't _mean_ it that way.


	5. The Calm

**Chapter Five : The Calm ...  
**And then his mind made the actual _imagery_ involved, and his brain tried to short-circuit on the picture of a small yellow and black kitten.

-+-

Most people would have been fairly distracted or even disturbed by a dream involving walking down the street with a highly desired and warred over ancient alien artifact of immense and unbelievable power, while being shadowed by an unseen mechanical alien, and walking forever down a street that only got closer in the barest of increments.

After a month of suffering through what seriously at least _felt_ like twelve hours of horrific nightmares every night, Sam was not everyone. He was actually fairly thrilled to have woken up, cast the dream out of his head without the barest care, and proceeded to display very uncharacteristic morning cheer. As this was the first restful night of sleep that he had gotten since he had bought the yellow Camaro, he was so _mentally_ rested that he exited the house with a bounce and a smile on his face.

Needless to say, Bumblebee had been somewhat unsettled.

Taking note of said unease, Sam figured (in his suddenly all-encompassing benign good humor) that he might as well explain. "Well, you know, since I drove you off that lot, I haven't had one good night's sleep. At first I thought someone was stealing you, then I couldn't sleep _at all_ having seen my car turn into a robot and then getting arrested ... so on and so forth. I just had a ... really nice dream last night." He stroked the steering wheel and cast the speedometer speculative looks. "Can I drive?" Of its own accord, his other hand went to the gearshift and his fingers curled over it eagerly.

Obligingly, the engine turned over, and the tuner on the radio playfully slid all the way across even as a song was already playing: _"When I'm a-walkin', I strut my stuff, and I'm so strung out~! I'm high as a kite -- I just might stop to check you out!"_

Pretty sure that Bumblebee wasn't kicking him out, but not as sure that the Autobot wasn't accusing him of being drugged out of his mind and not particularly caring, he grinned and slid into reverse. Sam started out fully intending to go to school -- he even chose to go the same way that Bumblebee took him, but then when he was going through a stop light (legally, on green, when it was his turn, of course), he accidentally pressed a little hard on the gas pedal. The engine thrummed with power even as he jerked his foot back like he thought he was setting it in a steel bear trap, and he stared down at the dash board.

That was when Sam first began to understand the universal male desire for a really powerful car. And ... well, he was pretty sure that they didn't come more powerful than an alien engine. And ... wow. He bit his lower lip.

"Sam," Bumblebee cut in, "I think that would probably be a bad idea --"

"Shush," he interrupted gently, looking over Bumblebee's interior with new eyes. "I'm driving."

"Sam?"

Mindful of the fact that this was a living organism, and one he was terribly fond of to begin with, Sam didn't do anything so crass as to 'put the pedal to the metal'. As a matter of fact, he was as gentle but firm as he had been when dealing with Mojo when he was just a pup. Grinning, heart pumping, he broke away from the normal going-to-school pattern and got them on a road that would accept a higher rate of speed, coaxing Bumblebee's engine to _purr_. He was just really getting into it when control was taken away and Bumblebee stopped responding to the wheel or the pedals.

Sam indignantly folded his arms as they coasted to a stop on the shoulder, glowering at the dashboard.

"If you persist," Bumblebee said dryly, "You'll be late for school."

"Forget school," he said, flopping back against the seat. "Com'n, Bee, I'm in too good of a mood to sit around and waste it."

"Unless your good mood is due to an illness -- which it isn't, I'm sure -- you should go to school."

"What are you, my mother?"

"Hardly. But you'll worry your friends and your parents will be upset. Which would cause more drama than you really want to deal with, yes?"

"W-well, screw you and your damn logic," he said petulantly. "Fine, take me to school, whatever."

Bumblebee's engine hummed thoughtfully even as he made the necessary adjustments to their course. "You aren't angry at me," he said confidently.

Sam gave the steering wheel an incredulous, acidic look. "You'd better be glad I'm in too good of a mood to get angry."

In a wondering way, Bumblebee added, "You're _never_ angry at me."

"We can change that," Sam said, arching his eyebrows. "Right here, right now. Just keep -- doing what you're doing here. That'll do it really quick."

He had the distinct impression the car was laughing at him, even though Bee turned on the radio to one song and kept it there.

Though his good mood was slightly diminished by having to attend school, it was still such a large improvement over his recent attitude that Mikaela had been worried that he was sick until Miles assured her that it was _much_ more 'Sam-like' behavior. Then everyone was unanimously pleased after Sam and Bumblebee's little talk, though only two people knew what the source of it might have been.

But then, _after_ school, instead of taking Sam to the park, Bumblebee took him right back to the spot that he had stolen control back and idled on the side of the road. "I've spent the time during which you were in school locating ideal roads where there will be little interference from your law enforcers," Bumblebee informed him with a suspicious tone ... it sounded rather pleased.

Sam was grinning like a moron, his good mood firmly back in place. "Do Autobots like driving fast?" he asked.

His engine hummed for a moment, then he said, "Not alone -- well, some would, but most of us would find it more exciting to race with at least one other. Like a game of tag, only no one is 'it'."

Taking that in, he felt that strange warm sensation come back, soothing the aches from the tense muscles he'd only eased today. Sam apparently counted as 'at least one other', even if he was inside Bumblebee and _human_ and therefore couldn't play Giant Alien Robot 'tag'. A sense of giddiness settled into his bones, making his heart flutter and his stomach become unsettled. _He was going to go driving with a kick ass robot!_ An entirely different set of muscles tightened in his frame, which was a relief. He didn't think he could enjoy high speeds with his back in agony.

Taking his cue, he wrapped his fingers around the steering wheel and gripped the gearshift with a firm hand. "Then I'm driving," he said, maybe smiling and maybe baring his teeth.

-+-

It wasn't that he got _tired_ of driving, just that when they'd hit the scenic land, it seemed about right to stop. The traffic here was thin, so he felt safe enough stopping, and eventually he ended up leaning against the side of the car with both hands fisted on the roof and under his chin. Somewhere between Tranquility and here, the roar of the engine and the epileptic flash of highway stripes stopped being exciting and started to remind him too much of fleeing Hoover Dam and then coming the long way home after an entire week of being alone. No allies in sight.

"Hey, Bee," he said, the thought coming to him and out his mouth before his normal brain-to-mouth filter could work, "do you know anything about Mikaela's deal with Ratchet?"

"Ratchet has agreed to 'show her the ropes'," Bumblebee replied. "Many of the things that need to be done to fix Cybertronian bodies is much too large and heavy for humans to do, however. It is still essential for her to learn everything."

"Really? How's that working out with her in school?"

"Sam," Bumblebee rumbled with amusement, "We surf the Internet from everywhere and anywhere. It isn't that hard."

"Ah -- right," he said, blushing slightly. "Sorry, I just thought some hands-on experience would be good."

" ... it may come to that. Sam, you are not allowed to volunteer me."

"What!" he squawked, leaning back to glower past his stomach at the dashboard. "Like I would!" _--laying there restrained and sososo panicked he went immediately into battle mode_ -- Sam swallowed hard and folded his arms over the roof, bending his head to them as if he could hide from it all. _And it was all flat and cold and smooth but for himself, so he wrapped his arms around him and watched his billowing breath_.

"I appreciate it," he said dryly. He was good at that 'dry' thing, Sam had noticed. " ... Sam, would you like to talk about it? What happened, after the events in Mission City?"

His nails scraped harmlessly over the paint. "No," he said, throat straining against his wrist and coming out hushed. "Not really, no."

"I have been -- captured by those individuals, and I saw how they restrained the All Spark," he said carefully. "Sometimes, I notice that you are unwilling to admit to things humanity has done, but ... I do have Internet, Sam."

Pushing back and turning his back on the car, he looked up and down the highway, but there really wasn't anyone else in sight. "Yeah, well," he said briefly, "you can probably imagine, then."

" ... 'not even enough to activate an iPod' ... you made this statement to me."

"I don't want to talk about it," he said as he stuffed his hands in his pockets.

"I do," Bumblebee said flatly.

He shoved away from the car and stepped forward onto the road. "I'm gonna walk," he said flippantly, starting back toward Tranquility. Not that he seriously thought he'd be able to walk all the way back ... they were probably at least a hundred miles away from his home, and what -- the average human walked ... three miles an hour? Yeah right.

Of course, his car had a mind of it's own, and the moment he had the clearance, he pulled out and circled around to rumble along behind Sam, even if it was only three miles and hour. Sam didn't even know it was possible for cars to go that slow.

"You know, this isn't going to work," he said. "I don't care what kind of -- kicked Camaro looks you give me."

"If you tell me," Bumblebee said, "I'll show you what I can _really_ do."

Sam stopped walking, turned a little, and stared at the car. "You know, I kinda knew I was a shitty driver next to you, but ... what?"

"When I incorporated pedals into my framework in order to make it so that I could be driven like a normal car, I wasn't able to calibrate the shift of the pedal to accommodate the full extent of my acceleration."

"What? Bee. English, please."

"The pedals," Bumblebee said, "are incapable of moving far enough to allow a human driver to make me go as fast as I can. Normally, I don't, since the others don't have as aerodynamic of a form, but -- Sam. Tell me what they did to you, and I'll show you."

Oh God. What an extortionist! Who the hell told Bee that Sam was an _adrenaline junky_? "That's fighting dirty," he accused, turning away to avoid the temptation of sleek lines, the wide-set tires and the low set of the car that betrayed what _humans_ thought it could do with the proper power.

"I don't always play fairly," he said simply. Revving the engine, he swerved around Sam and flung the door open. "Get in, Sam." The engine purred like a cat the size of a house, a rumbling that Sam could feel in his _bones_. He felt a little weak in the knees, and bit his lip again. He wanted to -- he _really_, _**really**_ wanted to. Oh God. He _**wanted**_ to get in the car ... so, _so_ badly.

With a feat of will that should earn him his own empire, he stepped around the door and walked quickly past the bumper. "No," he said, voice a little rough. "I'm not talking about it, Bee."

The door shut with a crisp snap, and the next thing Sam knew, he was bumped rather hard by the -- ha ha -- bumper. He jumped, stumbled a little, but Bumblebee didn't let up and he ended up scrambling onto the hood of the car our of some instinct that was really, really dumb and should have wiped out the entire human species, it was _so dumb_. At this range, there was little question about the engine rumbling being felt in his bones, and then the Camaro began to pick up speed.

"Oh -- no! No, no, no no-no-no -- _oh my God_!" Sam shrieked, fingers scrambling for some sort of handhold _somewhere_ -- but the hood of the Camaro was as smooth as ice, and he blindly set his feet to the metal for _some_ sort of traction, the rubber _sort of_ catching on the slick paint. They weren't really going all that fast, but being on the outside of the car made it seem a _lot_ faster (or maybe it was the other way around, that being inside made it seem _slower_), and the engine was so loud that it vibrated through every part of him, tickling his inner ear until he had to shut his eyes tightly.

The darkness behind his eyes dyed white like overexposed film and the vibrations became a complete and utter _stillness_, and Sam might had died in that instant except the next thing he knew, Bumblebee was silent and coasting to a stop. Inertia that didn't really exist kept Sam moving even as the tires stopped rolling, and he slipped forward, sliding off the hood and landing on wobbly feet that gave out from under him so that he kept sliding until he was slumped in front of the car, both arms spayed on top of the hood, fingers stiff and still trying to catch on a hand-hold. He sat there, trembling violently, and he didn't know if it was terror or _what_, but he didn't feel very afraid ... just awake. His breath was coming too slow, but he couldn't try to breathe any faster, gripping at the bumper of the Camaro.

"Oh. Oh. Oh. Oh my God. Oh my God. Okay," he finally said, a little whisper, "okay. I'll get in."

He heard the click of the door, and eventually convinced himself to try to move, bracing himself almost entirely on Bumblebee and sliding around until he finally reached the door and wobbled in, settling himself on the seat and still shaking. The door closed gently, and he sat there for a moment, then finally drew in breath to say, "wow. Okay. What the hell was that?"

"Evidence suggests that near-death experiences tend to rearrange priorities," Bumblebee said blithely. "And my own data suggested that you would enjoy such an experience."

Sam stared at the dash board. "You are --" but he didn't know what to call Bumblebee, so he just fell silent and stared for a while.

"Unbelievable," Bumblebee supplied after a moment. "I didn't know your reaction would be that strong. Are you okay?"

"I can't breathe," he complained, because each breath felt a little like a small miracle. He was trying to decide if he was frightened of Bumblebee or not, but 'frightened' and 'Bumblebee' didn't really fit in the same sentence unless there was a 'for' between them. "I blacked out," he finally realized.

"I noticed," Bumblebee said cautiously. "I didn't exceed forty miles an hour."

"Oh my God," Sam said eloquently. How would that feel like at ninety? Oh -- oh shit. He was _such_ an idiot ... "You are not allowed to do that. Ever again. Never."

"I didn't plan to," he said touchily.

"Not even if I ask you to," he clarified.

Bumblebee seemed at a loss.

"I don't care what I say, or offer, or threatened," he continued, "never. Ever. Ever again. Got it?"

"Ah."

Sam glowered, but Bumblebee seemed disinclined to explain that noise. After a second, he reluctantly said, "look into 'adrenaline junkies', and their life expectancy some time."

"I will," Bumblebee said. "Now will you talk about it?"

For a few blissful and terrified moments, he had forgotten why he had ended up on the hood of the Camaro. "I guess," he said reluctantly, "but we'd better head home. I'm like ... way overdue."

"I took the opportunity to contact your parents and inform them that you wouldn't be back at the usual hour," he said, "now talk."

He gaped in outrage. That was what he got for being friends with a giant robot alien, he supposed. " ... I don't know where to start," he said slowly.

"Optimus Prime shared his memories of everything including you deactivating Megatron," Bumblebee said, "after that moment, everyone lost track of you. Start there."

"Okay," he agreed slowly, casting his mind back to those moments ... the falling and the running and the screaming -- not just his screams, but other people. Dying people. _Dead people_. "Alright. So ... you saw the part where Optimus was all: 'put the cube in my chest', right? And I saw that one of the missiles had blasted open Megatron's chest. So I --" that part really wasn't clear in his head. Just this sense of '_stop stop stop make it stop get it get it get it __**kill it**_'. Vaguely remembered holding the cube up, as if he was supposed to be able to reach up and physically touch the cube to Megatron's chest. A sense of '_this is how it's supposed to go_'. " ... I did it. I guess it's lucky Megatron didn't fall _on_ me when I did it. Then .. I don't really know what I was thinking."

That part was possibly even worse than when he was holding the cube, because everything seemed fuzzy ... disoriented, dislocated ... something had been painful. Wrong. Holding something with the power of several suns while it destroyed a life ... that had done something to him. It seemed a little like knowing where everything was. He'd had some kind of delusion, some kind of _knowing_, of feeling where it all was ... everything. He'd been going somewhere ... trying to get somewhere. He thought he remembered a soldier grabbing him. At the moment, it had been strange and terrifying, and he couldn't understand what was being said to him.

"Someone found me," he said slowly. "I think. I ran into someone. One of the soldiers? They put me somewhere." He remembered touching the shell of the vehicle, knowing it wasn't like the others -- Optimus Prime and the others. It wasn't like them. He knew that. It seemed important. Strange. "In a vehicle. They were taking me -- taking me to a doctor?" The tone had been comforting, even if he couldn't quite understand the words being said. "I guess the cover up was already underway, because it was -- was it?"

"Injured people were taken to a small temporary base outside of the city," Bumblebee said. "We looked for you there. You weren't."

"I think I was," he said. "Someone looked at me. They were -- checking out my ribs. I think." Someone checking his limbs with practiced ease and making reassuring noises when he winced under the pressure applied to his ribs. Patted his shoulder, griped his arm. "Then -- I remember the clicking." It had sounded like _here here here_ to him, _now now now_. Click. Click. Click. "They took me away. They took me away and --" the annoying cacophony and _here now here now here now_ and then it was pressed to his face and then he felt it all shifting into place and that was when he knew that the weak soft body that supported him was -- "I woke up. Somewhere else. They had --" the blare of vitals, and everything seemed different now. A little more sane. He could understand what was being said, battle shock having faded.

" -- it was like a hospital," he remembered, "they had to have someone with some medical background. But not much -- they were .. testing my clothing. It must have been full of radiation ... all of the robots picking me up and the All Spark ... and when they were done, they put me in a box."

For the first few hours, he had screamed himself hoarse, pounding away at the glass walls and shouting abuse at the people around him. Then Simmons had come around. _Simmons_. Six-by-six-by-six, and a guy like Simmons walking free. It had burned him, but it made him shut up and watch. It had been hard to talk, anyway ... he'd stayed hoarse up until he'd gotten home and drank some of those herbal teas and were popping multi-vitamins like it was going out of style. "They put me," he said carefully, "in a glass box -- you wouldn't know, but they had this room. They had to lock us in, and they -- they funneled the All Spark energy ... into a small glass box just like it. And they would -- ... they'd put electronics in the box. Asked us for phones ... Blackberries. And they would funnel the energy into the box and -- and it was that kind of box. Glass. Plexiglas, actually, I guess. Bullet proof. And it was cold. I didn't get _pneumonia_, but they kept it cold. And ..."

And finally. The soldiers that came, with their guns. And they held their guns on him all the way to the government, but he'd been still and silent and _cooperative_. He'd been sitting in his corner, arms on his knees and breath billowing like white sails, and they came so cautiously with their guns. Sam hadn't though much about it ... still didn't. Didn't even say _shoot me. I dare you_. Saved his threats for the bureaucrat and his Clark-Kent manners.

" ... they got me out. Took me somewhere else. Gave me a phone. The one you texted."

"You are alive, though," Bumblebee said.

"Yeah," he agreed, but his voice sounded dead.

It was almost audible, the struggle Bumblebee was having before he finally said, "sometimes, Autobots are ... captured by Decepticons. Megatron and his closest aren't the sort, but some of them are and -- but you're still alive, Sam."

He suddenly realized that Bumblebee wasn't saying that for _him_, but ... and he tried to look at the thing in reverse, if Bumblebee had tried to protect him from the Cybertronians, but then Bumblebee disappeared and _something happened to him_ that he wouldn't talk about and -- "Yeah," Sam said, a little more firmly. "I'm still alive, Bee. You just scared me half way into my grave, but I'm not there yet."

"I did not," Bumblebee said touchily.

"Did so," he said with amusement.

"Not."

"So."

"This is senseless and aggravating," he said darkly.

"Don't give up now," Sam said cheerfully, "I can senselessly aggravate you better than you can scare me."

"Let's not try that."

"Scardy cat. Car. Scardy car? Hmm."

Bumblebee huffed with exasperation, which meant that Sam totally won. "Buckle up," he said tensely. "Now it's my turn to drive." His engine made the most threatening noise that Sam had heard out of a machine that wasn't spoken in the human language, and he scrambled desperately for the seat belt.

"Wait, wait wait!" he cried as the tires spun with a shriek on the pavement, and he was still fighting for the seat belt when they found traction and shot down the highway. "_Oh my God, Bumblebee! You jerk!_"

-+-

_He was walking down the street again, All Spark between his hands and nestled to his stomach. The night was dark and silent, alive, but the lights were off, the air was hot but moist. It was one of those prowling nights, when everyone who was still awake felt restless and wanted to go outside and take a walk. It was a night like that night he had turned to Mikaela and said: "Fifty years from now ..."_

_The Cybertronian was walking behind him, keeping pace. The All Spark was hot against his hands, but comfortable. It was hot like the showers he took that nearly scalded him, burning skin red until steam rose from his arms. It was a good heat -- comfortable, and familiar. He wanted to wrap it around him. _

_The hand pushed against his lower back, urging him on. It was a surprisingly _small_ hand, and he had the sense that the Autobot (it had to be an Autobot, because a Decepticon would have killed him and stolen the All Spark) was equally small. "Not yet," the Autobot bid him, and his voice sounded like --_

But why his voice sounded familiar was not answered, because then he woke up.

-+-

"So, what's up," Sam inquired, flicking his hand to shake off the condensation from his soda. "What couldn't you say in front of Bee?"

"It's not that," Mikaela said as she relaxed against the picnic table, picking through the fries. "I just wanted this talk between the two of us."

Unconsciously, he glanced about. It wasn't exactly between the two of them -- they'd gone to the Mall, and ended up in the food court ... because Sam's improvement in temper didn't come coupled with any less of an appetite. Sure, no one was going to be paying attention to them, but it wasn't exactly where _he'd_ chose to have some mysterious discussion. "Yeah, okay," he said.

"I've been thinking of testing out of high school and getting my GED," she said bluntly.

Sam tried to inhale his straw and ended up having a mild fit. "What?" he croaked when he could finally stop coughing over his knees.

Mikaela looked rather amused. "Listen, I've never been real interested in high school. I really only went to keep the truancy officers off my back and to have a little normalcy in my life -- but that's kinda hard to have when we're friends with walking super computers, and I'm learning to fix them. We're already their wards, and I've spoken to Ratchet about this. He wants me to finish school, of course, but he agreed that I'd make a lot better progress if I could move in with them and devote all of my time to learning how they work."

"But --" he said, but couldn't think of what he was going to say. "So ..."

"Eloquent as ever, Sam," she said with amusement. "I'm bringing this up for a reason, you know. You've got a lot more tying you to that school -- you have Miles, and you can't just drop out like I'm thinking of doing. But you might want to consider it. Your grades have been plunging, you have no interest in class, and you're bored with everyone there." She ticked off every point on a finger. "Sometimes I think you just go to humor your parents and to meet up with Miles and me. But I don't think I'm going to be there for long."

"Mikaela," he said reflexively, "I -- I don't have a job to look forward to. Even if I _could_ test out for my GED, what would I do? Go and ... get in the way?"

"I'm sure they wouldn't mind," she said. "It's their fault -- they dragged you into it. Besides, I'm sure that Bumblebee would like to be around them again."

Which had been something on Sam's mind for a while now. Well, more specifically, it was how his Camaro had gone from being someone who chased him down while he peddled away frantically on a pink bike and did dance moves to the quietly responsible Autobot he appeared to be now. Did being separated from the others make him sad or something? He'd certainly been -- ah, mischievous enough when he knew that the others were coming.

"The thing is," she said softer, "I think he's really taking this 'guardian' thing seriously, so if you're going to talk to him about all of this, keep that in mind. Anyway," she leaned back in the chair with a sudden air of nonchalance, "summer's almost here, so there's no hurry. If you decide to test out, you can do it next year. Senior year's just for kicks, anyway, really."

"If I tried to test out for my GED, my parents would _kill_ me," he said with disbelief.

"Like they killed you for owning an awesome car?"

"Ugh -- don't ... use _logic_ on me."

"I know, it's so unfair. After all, you speak 'robot'."

"And you were afraid of _Bumblebee_."

"They'd just had a _giant droid death match_, forgive me for not having some weird mysterious bond with the Camaro-that-isn't!"

"_Bumblebee_, Mikaela. Bumblebee."

"Ugh. You are so lucky you were right about him."

"Yeah, well, I knew what he was _before_ I pulled you into the car, you know. My reasoning was pretty secure."

"You ... are _such_ a jerk! You knew _before_ we had that day-long car chase what he was?"

"Um ... yeah, he kinda stole himself and was all ... E. T. phone home, you know?"

"God, I am so glad I'm not dating you right now."

"What?!"

"You pulled me into a giant robot!"

"I was pretty sure it was safe!"

"You didn't _know_!"

"Okay -- I didn't, but I was pretty sure it was safer than the demon cop from hell!"

" ... well, alright, I think I can understand that. Jesus. You never really told me about all of that."

"Ah -- well, it was a lot of running and screaming, and I was thrown on top of a car and screaming, and then more running and screaming, and then I clotheslined you off the vespa."

"That's it?"

"Yep. That's pretty much all I remember."

-+-

Sam was minding his own business, half dozing when he was supposed to be doing his homework -- but to be honest, he'd rather be sleeping, so eh -- leaning against Bumblebee's wheel as was usual for the two of them, when something unusual happened.

Bumblebee actually started a conversation.

Obviously, he was a little rusty at it, because he did this by asking out of the clear blue: "How do you do it?"

This understandably confused Sam, who had been in that weird half-dream state and trying to escape from his angry teacher-become-Decepticon. It took him a second to register what his car said, but it didn't make any more sense. "How do I do ... what, Bee?" he asked fuzzily.

"Humans," Bumblebee said, sounding baffled. "You're all ... soft on the outside, and easily damaged ... but instead of making your world safe, you make it more dangerous. You _like_ making it dangerous."

It was a heavy subject to wake up to, and Sam felt extremely out of his depth for several moments. But he thought about it anyway, because Bumblebee asked. "You're thinking about all the ways I can get hurt that you can't prevent," he guessed, but he thought it was probably exactly that. Hadn't it been Bumblebee who said that they were depressingly prone to damage? "I think my parents feel like that, too. I think we all do. We know the world is dangerous, and our lives are short and fragile. You could probably -- I dunno -- find _gigabytes_ of information on the Internet about human mortality ... philosophies, songs, all kinds of things. We made a religion, you know, that became wildly popular because it promised us eternal life in a safe place that makes us happy. We use science to preserve our life and make us live longer -- devote decades of research to learning how to keep our bodies in as perfect health as possible ... put machines in our chests to do the work our heart couldn't do anymore."

"You have done your research on this as well, then."

Sam shrugged, his shirt catching on the rubber of the tire. "Didn't have to, not really. Its -- everywhere. I read this phrase, somewhere ... that humans are born dying. I think we know it, too. But, yeah, I ... have done research. And I think that even though we're not strong or anything, or ... durable, you know, that we make our lives dangerous, or do things that shorten it because ... this is the only chance we have. It's like: would you rather have seventy years of boredom, or fifty years of seeing incredible things, going places, doing and experiencing all kinds of stuff? And yeah, some humans decide to have the longer life -- but some of us chose to have the excitement. It's sorta like ... existing versus _living_."

"I ... see," Bumblebee said, but Sam thought that it was clear he didn't. "I suppose this is why humans also have a word for hope -- and optimism."

"And luck," Sam agreed, pausing briefly to yawn, "for the things that should have killed us and didn't. Faith for when we can't make sure things will work out, but we trust they will, anyway. That and our really cruel tendency to compare everything. The Mayfly only lives for one day, you know. Compared to that, seventy or eighty years is forever."

"Compared to Cybertronians, it's not even a blink of an eye."

"And _that_, my friend, is why we have the expression 'making the best of things', you know. The here-and-now is pretty sweet; don't blink or you'll miss it."

" ... sometimes you have a really morbid sense of humor, Sam."

"It's part of being human, Bee."

-+-

It was Saturday, and he was sitting on the hot cement in front of his best friend's house because his mother's stove had a gas leak. Sam had been the one to notice (though he had to wonder how anyone else _didn't_ notice, the smell of gas had been noxiously strong), but the repair man confirmed it, and Sam had been driven out by the sheer odor. So naturally, he'd gone to Miles, but Miles had to stay home because of his stupid dog ate one of his mom's shoes, so there they were. In the drive way. In the sun. In the heat. He swore it was at least a hundred degrees, and he might just start melting.

"Do you really have to do that in my driveway?"

Sam stopped and shot Miles a politely patronizing look. "You're just jealous _you_ don't have a bitchin' Camaro to wash."

Miles bounced the basketball off the cement a few times, eyeballing the yellow car suspiciously while Sam went back to working bug guts off the grill. "Whatever man. But why in _my_ driveway?"

"You were the one who accused me of neglecting my car, Miles. Don't complain now."

"Maybe we should go inside. Looks like you're getting sunburned." The _thump-swoosh_ of another nothing-but-net shot.

Sam was actually _not_ sunburned, but he was pretty sure Miles didn't know that. If he was red in the face at all, it was because apparently his car had _not_ answered his _real_ question about car washes. Bumblebee was doing that 'silent engine' thing, but Sam wasn't fooled. He could feel the frame vibrating under the well-worn plastifiber curlicues of the scrubber. He was pretty sure that Bumblebee knew someway of making him stop if it was making him uncomfortable, but ... well, he couldn't really think of a way to justify stopping himself. And it sort of made him envision Bumblebee as a big cat.

And then his mind made the actual _imagery_ involved, and his brain tried to short-circuit on the picture of a small yellow and black kitten. _Wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong!_ He'd leave the 'cartoon animal' versions of people/things/fictional characters to girls online, thank you anyway.

But speaking of it anyway -- "Remember Susan?"

"Suzy-bee?" Miles asked, glancing over. "Dude, she's my ex, of course I remember her."

"Remember those cats she used to draw?"

Now Miles was looking really worried. "I think so, yeah. Kinda my fault for showing her cat-macros."

"Just making sure I wasn't the only one," Sam said.

He laughed. "Dude, if that is _still_ breaking your brain, remind me to show you to this web site --"

"Oh, hell no!" Sam barked, turning away from Bumblebee. "Don't mention that place around me ... _ever_. Seriously. Ugh." It was _that_ web site that made Sam never trust the Internet again, and also never click on a link that Miles sent him. Miles seemed so normal! Or at least not like a cat-murdering psychotic rapist! But you wouldn't know that if you just looked at his Internet history.

"Trolled," Miles commented with humor, and shot another hoop. "One of these days, Sam, one of these days ... you'll lose the game."

"You _just_ lost it," he retorted, rather familiar with _that_ particular 'game', at least. For an entire _month_, Miles spammed his email just to say that he lost the game, and booby trapped his notebook with stickies of a similar nature.

"Ass." The rubber ball thumped against the cement driveway and clattered off the backboard. "Whoa -- Sam--!"

The basketball thumped off Bumblebee's hood, and the car gave a visible start as the alarm began wailing in startlement. "Jesus _Christ_, Miles!" Sam shouted over the noise, getting to his feet and snatching the ball away before passing it back to his friend -- a little roughly. Turning back to the Autobot, he patted the hood and the alarm cut off with a few chirrups.

"Sorry, man," Miles said sheepishly, biting his lip and standing stiffly.

"Christ," Sam repeated, dunking the scrub pad into the bucket of soapy water and running it gently over the invisible spot the ball hit. Bumblebee was no longer vibrating, and he seemed ... wary. "Watch it, dude. You dent him, you're paying for the repairs." He seriously doubted that anything Miles could do would actually dent the Autobot -- especially if Trent and his stupid keys would probably only chip the paint, but still. Sam sunk back to his knees and went back to work scrubbing dried bugs off the grill.

"Sorry," Miles said again, and he sounded relieved.

Sam grunted, working with dedication but also making soothing motions with the scrubber. It was a little too obvious that Bumblebee was not at all relaxed anymore. Thought the ... 'purring' had embarrassed him, he definitely preferred it to the wariness.

"So ..." Miles said, trailing off. "Dude. Mikaela."

The car actually _nudged_ against him to restart his hand. It was such an infinitely _small_ motion, because he'd been pressing against Bumblebee and therefore even the slightest shift was doomed to be noted, but it restarted his hand. "The three of us have been hanging out for nearly two months now, Miles," he said. "What about Mikaela?"

"Nothing," his friend said with entirely too much nonchalance, shooting another hoop.

"Right," Sam said with disbelief.

"It's just -- God, Sam, you were gaga over her since _first grade_. Now we all hang out and yeah you've got this weird friendship with her, and I can see why, now -- she's pretty awesome -- but ... what happened? You swore you'd _marry_ her one day," Miles said, every ounce of bafflement and frustration evident in his voice. Apparently, he really was bothered by all of the inexplicable changes in Sam's priorities, but was going the 'get to know you again' route instead of shunning him.

"Yeah, well," he said after a long moment, "I'd never left Tranquility or almost gotten killed, before. Things like that make you see the world different and change your priorities in ways you can't imagine. Besides, in the third grade, I was pretty disgusted with her."

"That's just because she had a mad crush on a movie character you hated. I think you actually cried about it."

"Miles!" Sam squealed in embarrassment -- and was embarrassed by the pitches his own voice had reached. It was one thing to talk as if Bumblebee wasn't there, but Sam had no delusions about the Autobot not _listening_. "God, don't bring that up! I was furious!"

He appeared a little surprise at the vehemence of Sam's reaction, but then grinned in that way that boded nothing good for Sam's dignity. "You've always been a little _over-sensitive _that way, Sammy."

"Jesus Christ, I swear to God that I'm going to _kill you_ ..."

"Bring it, dude, I'll kick your ass."

"No, I mean your school rep," Sam said. "I'll stop letting you get in this car. As a matter of fact, I think I can convince Satan's Camaro not to like you at all."

"Aw, come on ... you'll make me ride the bus?"

"It might convince you to get a car of your own, you know. Summer's almost here. I've been thinking, and if all precipitants are agreeable, I've been thinking about going on a road trip."

Miles perked up at that, jerking his head a little in a 'go on' motion. "Oh? Where to?"

"Don't know," Sam shrugged. "Places. I'll have to ask."

"And who are these so called precipitants?"

"Mikaela, if I can drag her off from her after school tutor. She's been taking extra classes, and I don't know if she can leave them behind. I _was_ thinking about asking you, but if you're going to be an ass about it --"

"Hey, don't take it seriously, I was only joshin' you."

"Right," Sam drawled, then swiped the rag over the front of the Camaro and beamed at it. Good as new. Giving it a pat, he stood up. "Well, if you can change my mind, I'll think about it. Of course, my parents might get all nervous again, like they normally do. Dad might try to take some time off work and chaperone."

"Sucks."

"My Dad is a push over. If I went to Vegas, he might try to buy me a hooker."

"That's kind of awesome, in a creepy sort of way."

"I'm not going anywhere there are hookers. Do - not - want."

"Vegas is closed due to AIDS?"

"Right."

"So where are we going?"

Sam held up his hands and made 'wait' gestures. "Hold it, I still have to make sure who can come and can't. Besides, even if this looks like an '08, it's the same underneath, and if Bee doesn't want to go, we aren't going."

Miles dribbled the ball for a bit, eyeballing the Camaro. "Bee, huh? I can see why, I guess. That short for Honeybee?" He waggled his eyebrows.

Apparently he was awesome enough to be able to choke on _air_. "_No_, Miles, it's short for Bumblebee."

They stared at each other for a moment. Slowly, Miles said, "... okay, care to explain?"

He shrugged, trying not to look shifty. "Sometimes you don't name the car, Miles. He came like that. Anyway, it's nearly supper time, I'll call you if my parents are cool with it."

"Yeah, whatever man, see you tomorrow."

Cleaning supplies were put away and then Sam was sliding into the Camaro, relaxing against the leather bucket seats. "Sorry about the basketball, Bee," he murmured as he pretended to back the Camaro out of Miles' driveway. He slid his hands over the wheel apologetically.

"I was only a little startled," Bumblebee said sheepishly.

"Yeah," Sam said, smirking a little, "you know, when I asked about car washes, I really did expect some sort of warning of any weird reactions."

"No humans had the chance to wash me before," he replied, sounding a little amused himself. "I didn't know what to expect."

Well, that made enough sense. If Bumblebee had been a rogue car for all the years he had been on Earth ... "Whoa, no wonder you were so dirty," he said, brushing his thumb over the Autobot symbol in the center of the steering wheel in nostalgia. Then he smiled. "Speaking of that day in the car lot, good job being sneaky and subtle, Bee."

Bumblebee channel surfed on the radio for a moment before he responded. "I was edgy," he said, repeating what he'd told Sam before. "Besides, I'd finally found you, was I supposed to let you walk off?"

"I guess not," Sam said, smoothing over the leather near his knee. "So, what about that road trip?"

"That would not be unpleasant. Optimus Prime might not like it, however, and it would be easiest if it were only the two of us, or with Mikaela. I do not require fuel, after all, and your friend Miles may notice."

"I guess road trips are a bad idea, then," he said thoughtfully, though there was a strange disappointed churning in his chest.

The volume knob spun just in time for that song that was pretty popular to come on, the guy singing: "_and this crystal ball -- it's always cloudy except for (except for) when you look into the past!_" and then the volume button spun down again. After a moment, Bumblebee admitted, "I can attempt to convince Optimus Prime, if that's what you wish."

It was like relief, uncoiling. "Nah, I wouldn't want to inconvenience everyone," he said with surprisingly truthfulness. "You're right, after all. Besides, it'll be summer. We could go down and see the others, right?"

"That would be ... nice."

And that made it even better than he'd expected.

-+-

_" ... I read this phrase somewhere, that humans are born dying -- and I think we know it, too."_

The average person doesn't think about it, though. From the moment that Sam truly comprehended that the beings he was looking at were possibly older than his entire civilization, and still considered _young_ ... he really hadn't been able to think of anything else. Every beat of his heart was a promise of death, the ticking of a bomb, the undeniable drag of time, as he died a little bit more every second that passed.

_Dying dying dying_.

Sam was very aware of his own mortality. Grammy -- his mother's mother -- had died when he was nine. She'd been his favorite grandparent, very lively, very sweet. Actually, now that he was a teen, he thought she just liked to get him high on sugar before sending him back to Mom and Dad. But when he was a kid, he adored her, and when he was nine, she suddenly got very, very ill.

For months after her funeral, Sam had been terrified that his parents were going to die, too. He was terrified _he_ was going to die. It possibly took him so long to get over it because he had never told anyone that he was suddenly scared everyone was going to die, but he did get over it. It took a lot of researching to convince himself that the chances of anything suddenly going very wrong was very low.

But he remembered. He remembered that just the month previous, Grammy had taken him swimming and rode bikes with him -- and then the next time he saw her, she was exhausted and pale and listless on a bed, unresponsive to the people around her except to turn away and close her eyes to sleep. He never forgot that.

So Sam had always know that would be him some day. But he always thought that all of his friends would either be old like him or already dead. The thought of leaving someone behind feeling like he felt when Grammy died was the very last thing he wanted.

He wasn't nearly so calm about it as he pretended.

So while on the outside Sam was the same as ever, inside was another story, and that pounding pervasive sense of _not enough time_, and feeling himself die with every second going by and knowing that _Bumblebee_ was a fighter and remember the sudden realization that _Jazz had been killed_, seeing that empty shell cradled in Optimus' arms -- it all compounded into the tight frightened feeling that any second, anything could go wrong.

Which meant that walking into the living room and seeing a scene that was sure to give him a distraction so he could think of something else was completely welcome. "Okay, what the hell, guys?"

His parents looked up at him like the proverbial kids with their hands in the cookie jar. They were both huddled around some sort of user manual like it was the Lost Scriptures or a treasure map, and very clearly, there was a brand new computer set in a jumble behind them, plastic bags, instructions in foreign languages, and a few large discarded card board boxes.

"Oh, hi, honey!" his mom said, straightening and smiling sweetly at him. She quickly moved to her feet and came toward him. "You know, I baked some cookies, they're in the kitchen --"

"Oh, God, no," he groaned, sidestepping her attempt to redirect him. "Are you guys trying to use computers again? We tried this once, we already know you can't use computers --"

"Well, it can't be too hard," his father reasoned. "I see Tammy use one every day --"

"Miss Tammy is an escaped military experiment in disguise, I am _telling_ you," Sam interrupted. "No _real_ eighty year old woman knows how to use the Internet. What have you _done_ to this poor thing?" He ran his hands over the plastic case protecting the tower and swept his fingers sympathetically over the back, where all the plugs were put into the wrong slots. "Oh, you poor, poor machine."

"Well," his mother said, folding her arms, "if you're so smart, Mr. Smarty-pants, _you_ put it together."

He turned to gape at her in offense. "What?!"

"Oh, don't look at me like that," she scolded. "Do you honestly think your _father_ could do it?"

"Hey!" Ron yelped in mild offense.

"_Mom_, stop being mean to Dad," he said, frowning slightly. "Why did you even buy a computer?"

"It's your fault," she informed him nonchalantly. "If you hadn't befriended alien machines, Ron wouldn't be jealous."

"What?"

"_Judy_!"

"What the hell."

"Don't listen to her, son."

"Mom?"

"Well, it's true," she sniffed. "Now, I'm going to check on supper."

"Jealous?!"

"It talks to you!"

"_He_ talks to me, Dad! _He_! Bumblebee has feelings, you know!"

"Yeah -- well --!"

"Oh, my God, whatever! Give me those," he demanded, holding his hand out for the manual.

"I can do it," his father said sulkily.

"Which is why I've had to set up ever electronic system we've got that didn't come with a handy installer? And why the first computer you guys bought is now in my room?" Sam asked skeptically. Well, if _that_ didn't earn him a dirty look. Right, no teasing the parents over their lack of technological knowledge. "Fine," he said, trying in vain to modulate his voice into a non confrontational tone. "Anyway, I'll be in my room if you need me."

Thirty minutes and a silent meal later, Ron moodily shoved the manual at Sam. Not rolling his eyes or anything inflammatory like that, he accepted the paper and moved to install their new computer. He couldn't fathom what was so difficult about plugging things in where they obviously needed to be plugged in, but it seemed to be a common ailment in the older generations. Sam was left to the computer, pretty much alone.

He rolled his eyes and set the manual aside before he began to adjust the computer's position, trying to be a little professional about it and bundling the cords up in a way that would keep them from being tripped over or caught by careless feet. Once he had things situated to his liking, he began to slide plugs into ports, effortlessly locating the partner hookups. It was practically color coordinated, after all. Satisfied when everything was plugged in properly, he went looking for a surge protector -- which, of course, neither of his parents had thought of. Luckily, he had an extra one laying around, from before he had to get another with _more_ outlets for all of his electronics. After he plugged it into the wall and the computer into it, he flipped the red switch a few times (honestly not certain of its purpose) before he flopped back into the chair in front of the computer.

Easy, now. He just had to turn the computer on. The button on the monitor fooled him a bit, but he reasoned that he hadn't pushed hard enough and finally got a nice click, where upon the little light came on, orange to indicate that the tower it was hooked to wasn't giving it feed. "Patience, padawan," he bid with some amusement, punching the tower button.

It politely stayed off.

Sam frowned at it, punched the button again, then tried holding it, but the tower refused. "Aw, man, come on," he grumbled, idly scratching at one of the several stickers on the front, near the ear-phone sockets.

Damned if the thing didn't _shock_ him!

Sam yelped and jammed his stung finger into his mouth, giving the tower wary looks. It continued to sit there innocently, politely not turning on. He didn't know how much he believed that, as it had _just shocked him_. He glared at it. It sat polite and innocently still. Sam glared some more. It still sat there. Polite. Still. Unlit.

Grudgingly, he reached out and poked the button again. This time it flickered green and a whirl of fans started on the inside, heralding the rest of the computer turning on. The light on the monitor turned green as well, and it flashed to life, playing the normal loading window.

"_Thank_ you," Sam said, pulling the keyboard over. He spent some time filling in the normal user information, got to the name of the computer, and smiled slightly. "I dub thee Gateway, the Compubot," he said, a little too sincerely for the tease and mockery he was intending. Still, he fed it into the name field and waited for the normal desktop configuration to load. He clicked around curiously, checking out some of the standard programs that came pre-installed.

Nothing interesting. There rarely was, in his experience with computers. Miles was some sort of weird gremlin thing, and went through about one computer ever two years, the memory card overloaded with games and running all glitchy from all the things he downloaded online. Sam always got to be there when Miles was installing another new computer.

Running his hand absently over the tower, checking for heat and the temperature of the air coming out of the vent, Sam was satisfied when the brand new computer was cold to the touch. "Well," he said to it, standing up. "There you go. Up and running. Try to behave for my parents, and don't confuse them too badly, okay?"

Out of the corner of his eye as he turned, he thought the screen flickered. He turned back swiftly, but the empty Windows desktop beamed at him innocently, green grass and blue sky. "Okay," he said slowly, turning back away and shaking his head. "I must really be tired. This ... brain tumor is playing tricks on me."

Running a hand through his hair, he went back upstairs to sleep, forgetting about his parent's continued mid-life crisis in light of robot aliens and thinking instead of Bumblebee's isolation from his comrades.

-+-

_He was walking through the night, All Spark in hand and pressed against his stomach, Autobot at his heels. The night was deep and secretive, hot and misty. The houses were silently and it was midnight -- the witching hour. At least, he was pretty sure it was the witching hour. It was special, anyway -- there was something in the air, a charge of sorts. He was alone, walking down the middle of the street past dark sleeping houses and silent non sentient cars, puddles of orange and blue splattered like the dedicated spray-shot of a dedicated graffiti artist. Everything glimmered a little, as if it were wet. _

_The All Spark was hot-shower warm and it felt good against his skin, and he wanted to wrap it around him like a blanket -- feel it all over and feel a bit more secure. _

_"Not yet," the Autobot said, steel (or whatever it was made of) fingers wrapping around his shoulders. _

_**When the time comes,**__ it assured him. _

_"How much further?" he asked. _

_"Not too much more."_

_**Patience, Samuel James Witwicky. You have all the time you could want**__._

_Oh. Right. Of course he did; he somehow forgot. So he walked, the electrifying blue shocks traveling over the hot cube in his hand, and the end of the street -- ever so slowly -- drew nearer. He couldn't see beyond it._

* * *

- If the first few sections didn't sound sexy before, they should, now! (But your milage may vary.) We very nearly had a Samgasm right there! D8 ... yeah, I don't know how all of that came out that way. It was kind of awesome, though. Massive crush on car is massive.

- Hopefully this makes events previous to the story a bit clearer. Even though it took me this long to write them. But you see, Sam really, _really_ didn't want to talk about it, woeface.

-Songs, in order of appearance: ("Blister in the Sun" - Violent Femmes) ("Thnks Fr Th Mmrs" - Fall Out Boy)


	6. before

**Chapter Six : ... Before ...  
**Of course, there was only so long that Sam was willing to ignore the fact that there was a strange Autobot in his driveway.

-+-

Bumblebee had seemed so pleased with the idea of meeting up with the others that it should have come as very little surprise that Sam chose that very weekend to go down to visit the other Autobots. With a playful swerve, they skidded up toward the base sideways, kicking up an absurd amount of dust. Sam was grinning like a moron again, because for one: Bumblebee was in a good mood, and for another, even when he _wasn't_ driving, it was a huge kick to feel powerful engines vibrating the entire metal frame he was trapped inside. And promises not to drive with Sam on the hood did not include not driving really, really fast.

Ratchet -- and strangely, Ironhide -- were waiting in bipedal form outside of the several buildings, Ratchet with his arms crossed and the black bot looking rather bored but also looking like he wasn't really planning on going anywhere. He wondered, a little, what giant robot aliens got up to when humans weren't around and they didn't really have anything else to do and -- well, maybe he was better off not knowing.

"Should I ...?" Sam questioned, wondering if Armageddon was going for a round two after that last practice run, or if he even wanted to know.

"Check ups," Bumblebee said with a note of exasperation. He played the cheesy music to ever B-movie whenever some horrible revelation came to light, the piano humming out over the speakers: _duh duh du~un!_

Sam snickered a little at that, climbing out when Bumblebee popped the door open. He didn't think much of it when Ratchet wanted to check Bumblebee up, after all, his car had been injured and in a healing process after the battle, and he was pretty sure Ratchet hadn't dropped by while he was asleep or in school or anything. While he didn't expect anything to be wrong with Bee, he suspected that Cybertronians needed to be maintained, too. Like a doctor's appointment, or changing the oil.

With a whirl-click of gears, the solid, _perfectly innocent_ looking Camaro suddenly broke into a thousand pieces, shifting and whirling about as Bumblebee stood and cheekily chirped at the two bots. It sounded hilariously like 'What's up', and judging by the way the two older mechs glowered, might have been something more like _'waaaazzzup?!'_ Sam had certainly gotten his share of filthy looks when he had mimicked that movie.

"Good luck!" he hissed in a stage whisper, exaggerating a wince for Bee's benefit. Bumblebee crooned with maybe-not-so-mock-fright in return, cringing as he approached the medic, considering that once he was in arms reach, the larger bot grabbed him firmly by one of the spikes of yellow armor branching off from his chest. Bumblebee squeaked in complaint as he was hauled off.

Ratchet only paused briefly to turn his body in a way that would have made any human wince, pointing at Ironhide who was glowering threateningly at Sam. "Ironhide!" he snapped. "Show the boy around the base!" Then both yellow(ish) bots disappeared into a hanger.

Ironhide recoiled and was probably doing the equivalent of gaping. He certainly did stutter a few times, then whipped around to glower at Sam like it was his fault.

Sam eyed the giant black Autobot with two cannons that were currently humming dangerously while said bot gave him a look that probably would have even made high commander Prime hesitate. Sam tentatively cleared his throat, squeaked out a greeting, them hemmed and hawed for a moment. "Um," he finally said, louder. "Let's not and say we did?"

With a deep rumbling noise that Sam felt in his bones more than heard, Ironhide appeared to consider it. "Acceptable," he growled out, promptly turned around, and stormed off toward a different building.

Right. Um. Well, Sam knew which buildings to avoid now, anyway.

For the first time ever, as he had been a little distracted with Bumblebee's feats of driving, Sam rested his eyes upon the Autobot's hide out, and promptly decided that he hoped it was temporary. It was in California, of course, because putting it anywhere else was sheer idiocy (as far as Sam was concerned. _He_ lived in California, after all, and he would have gotten severely peeved if more than seventy miles separated Bumblebee from the rest of his crew). It was also well away from human habitation. How they managed _that_, Sam was not certain. He'd been under the impression that pretty much everywhere was over-developed in his home state.

He couldn't decide if the base used to be military, or if it had been some rinky-dink airport that had been abandoned in favor of something like the South Western Airlines and was just barricaded like a military base as a favor. Either way, there were quite a few large metal buildings that appeared to either be hangers big enough to fit decent sized plans inside. Eyeing them critically, he decided that it was very likely Optimus Prime couldn't stand upright in one of them, but Bumblebee made it sound like one shape was essentially as comfortable as another.

On impulse, he decided to ask, later, if it was true. To shape shifters, one form probably was equal to another. All of the Autobots had such a weird way of moving, like in something denser than water and lighter than air. Which ... ah, was impossible, and brought him around to square one: giant walking super computers were more graceful than interpretive dancers.

Having scoped out the place from his sort-of distance, Sam moved closer to the buildings. There were indications that the Autobots were considering reworking the structure of the base, but with limited resources and manpower, hadn't figured out how to do so. Seeing as how he was giving himself a tour, he couldn't ask how they were planning to do it, but his mind started to go wild, trying to provide visuals and ideas. It was like ... Area Fifty-One, or something. Trying to hide the fact that _giant robots from outer space_ were living there. Cue brain sparks and whatnot; best to lower the floor than to jack up the ceiling, right? They could continue to pretend to be cars on the outside, go inside and down a ramp and retake their bipedal form --

They were really lucky the tallest guy around was Optimus Prime, who was less than thirty feet high. If he was like ... Godzilla or something, then they would have had some trouble.

By the time he had finished mapping the entire place, Bumblebee still hadn't reappeared. Sam sighed with exaggerated exasperation, looking around dully and jamming his hands into his pockets. After a moment, he quickly headed toward a building and the concrete sidewalk. He sat down on it and leaned back against the hot tin building, squinting his eyes against the sun.

Strangely, he didn't feel terribly overheated. It was a little bright against his eyes, but after a few moments of squinting, that resolved itself and he could see fine. Come to think of it, the base was actually ... really boring. He began to feel sorry for the Autobots, having such a reject base with such a boring view. There was dust, and grass, and more dust, and tin and concrete and dust.

Perhaps Sam should have expected it. Months after the fact, he still had a bone-deep soreness, an appetite that knew no bounds, and he liked to sleep more than ever before. His mother might have worried he was depressed (these were symptoms, after all), but the fact that he regularly hung out with Miles and Mikaela and 'played' with his car (driving fast on roads to nowhere, or relaxing under the tree and talking about serious things). Out under the hot sun, it felt good against his skin ... like he thought the All Spark might in his dreams. Searing-hot-shower and all around him. Beating from above and bouncing off the pavement below.

_And he was walking down the street in the middle of the night, time frozen still, All Spark cradled close to his chest and hot, blue dancing sparks across the surface (just like when Bumblebee coaxed it to be smaller), Autobot on his heels with the slow and deliberate careless walk of something that had seen eons come and go and knew there were countless more ahead. Houses were dark, vehicles lining the road were sleeping, stars overhead were shining and the night was black velvet with showcase lights of orange and blue, trying to call attention to the glimmering scenery, like thousands of glittering shards of glass. _

_Though he was walking toward the end of the street that seemed to get closer only in inch increments for ever five or so steps he had taken, he also had a sense of waiting. Someone was looking for him. _

_He heard the whirl click of Cybertronian gears, and he easily located the source. From behind a large decorative bush, the nimble sleek form of a protoform stepped, eyes glowing the friendly blue of Autobots. It was smaller than any Autobot that he had seen, but much larger and ... different from that spastic little glitch who was partners with the demon cop from hell. Unlike that glitch, the protoform had substance, and the same denser-than-water, lighter-than-air way of moving. _

_As graceful as it was, there was something fierce and birdlike about this Autobot. It cocked its head at him, and the way it moved its legs was like ... it was like a stork, which was the only bird he knew of that was graceful enough to compare. Then he realized -- no, it wasn't looking at him. It was looking at the 'bot behind him. That one was smaller that even this bot, which would come up to Bumblebee's headlights when he was standing straight -- a few feet over ten. The one behind him was shorter by a few feet at least. He wasn't certain. _

_The Autobot said -- he thought it said -- something, but it was all static and clicks and electric squeals. _

_So, Sam answered. "We're here, waiting. Optimus Prime is waiting."_

_The Autobot behind him curled one hand around his neck, and the All Spark burned and burned. _

Sam snapped awake with a clumsy flail and a blurted "guh?" that was embarrassing even in his muddled state. He flung up a hand and squinted up at what had nudged him out of his nap. Namely his sixteen foot tall robot guardian who liked yellow, lions, and disco balls. "What?" he asked blankly.

"You were sleeping in the sun, Sam," Bumblebee said in his incongruently formal voice.

Sam huffed and stretched against the cement sidewalk as if he were in bed -- arms above head, feet flat and toes down pointed, spine arched until his shirt and jacket pulled up -- before he rolled over and moved to his feet. "Yeah, yeah, I know. UV radiations going to eat my face off. My mom tells it to me all the time." He straighten out his clothing absently, dusting off dirt and small rocks.

Bumblebee made one of those odd electrical chirping/crooning noises he made sometimes. Sam was pretty sure that one was amusement. "Maybe you should listen to her," he said, straightening to his full height.

Sam made his own noise, though of course he had an organic voice box and who knew how complex Cybertronian verbal units were. Or whatever they were called. "So, what's the -- 911, 411, um, twelve-eleven? Seven eleven? ... forget it. Are you okay? Ratchet find anything?"

"I am in optimal shape," Bee admitted. "Ratchet was a little surprised, since it was a bit early for me to be seamlessly repaired, but it's been a long time since we've had a chance to -- R n' R?"

"Ah, normally don't get a chance to have fun, huh? Yeah, we usually have the opinion that laughter is the best medicine, so I'm sure having fun is part of that, too," Sam nodded in understanding. "Hey, Bee," he added suddenly. "Do you guys have Autobots that are smaller than you? I mean, like a lot smaller." He glanced up the height of his friend. "I mean, you're the shortest Autobot that I know, but there is a big difference between your height and Optimus."

Bumblebee actually paused in the middle of walking. It was a small movement, but it was a _way_ obvious break in his usually graceful movements. "Cybertronians come in all shapes and sizes, Sam. I am not the smallest 'model' by far." He hesitated again. "Jazz's actually six inches shorter than I am. There are also some models that are several feet shorter."

"That should be fun," Sam said wryly. "They should be thrilled to come to Earth and have to take the form of some really small car."

"You might be surprised," Bumblebee said with amusement. "Parts can be folded or _unfolded_. The original Camaro model provided more room for me than my current alt form."

Ah -- that was something that Sam hadn't considered before. "So, like ... what would be the smallest vehicle you could change into?"

"I don't have _that_ much folding capacity, Sam," he said. "I chose the original model for a reason -- it's my median. Anything roughly equal in volume to it is within my capacity. Other Cybertronians have more or less ability to compact themselves. Optimus Prime was forced to choose something that compacts him quite tightly, which is perhaps why he prefers not to use it. He is a commander, not an operative."

The world of Cybertronian battle technology was still new and boggling. He frowned slightly. "What about that ... spastic little silver monster that was with Demon cop from hell."

Bumblebee's gears whirled and click in that way that made Sam think of amusement. "That was Frenzy and Barricade," he said. "Frenzy is too small to have a vehicle mode. He is an ... extreme operative, which is to say that he's been modified heavily to ... be a virus in physical form."

"I wish someone had stepped on that spastic little silver monster," Sam grumbled.

There was a clear distasteful tone to Bumblebee's electronic voice. "If only stepping on Frenzy would _work_. He has no ... central circuit. Rather, his entire body is a central circuit, so as long as some part of him survives ..."

Sam thought about that. Thought about punting the spastic little glitch's head. He groaned, grinding a heel against his forehead. "Mikaela cut ... Frenzy? She cut Frenzy's head off and I punted it."

After a second (possibly cross referencing 'punting' and videos of such), Bee said, "Yes, as much stress relief as that was, it didn't cause him irreparable harm."

They walked in silence for a moment, and as Bumblebee got ready to transform back into a Camaro, Sam worked up his morbid humor again. "So he's like a starfish, right? Are there _two_ Frenzies now?"

He didn't know an Autobot could fudge up their own transformation so badly. Thankfully, the only damage was to Bee's dignity, which could easily be repaired.

-+-

Over and over again, he traced the repetitive pattern on the corner of his paper. He was _supposed_ to be paying attention, it was _supposed_ to be homework, and it was _supposed_ to be hard. Sam had glanced at it and quickly puzzled it out, like he had cut the paper apart and rearranged the information until it came together in a way that made sense. He already knew how to solve it, so he busied himself with doodling the strange little symbols he'd noticed on the side of Bumblebee's helmet. Maybe he'd ask what they meant ...

The bell signaling the end of the day went off, startling him out of his stupor.

"Mr. Witwicky, I want to see you after class."

He looked up at Mrs. Dorsey warily, not moving as everyone scrambled to stuff their things into their backpacks and get out of class. She did not look pleased, but it was more the way that a person does when they're having to do things they didn't want to. Sam was familiar with such an expression, though usually from the other side.

"See you outside," Mikaela murmured, her fingers sliding down his sleeve as she passed. It was one of the few classes, like History, that he didn't have with Miles, and he hoped that she would tell Miles what was holding him up -- and not some twisted lie, like she did some times. Mikaela could be _mean_.

Finally, the last student stepped out, mindfully closing the door with a wide-eyed ogle back at the two of them. Sam tossed a dark look his way, which made Billy jerk back and shut the door with a snap. God, Billy was _such_ a pain in the ass. Who cared who got in trouble with who over what?

"Do you have your homework from Monday?" Mrs. Dorsey asked, shuffling her things around her desk.

"No," he said slowly, really not feeling up to playing the sort of game that she was up to.

"And from Friday?"

"No."

"And that Wednesday?"

"No, ma'am," he said, the courteous title meant to somewhat disguise his utter irritation with this track.

"You know," she said, looking up at him grimly, "I assign homework to _help_ you. I'm really very disappointed with you, Mr. Witwicky."

He couldn't completely restrain the sigh, but he hid it in the shuffle to get his things into his backpack. "It's just make-work, anyway, isn't it?" he asked, standing and slinging his backpack over his shoulder.

She wasn't impressed. "It's _practice_, to make sure you understand the material. We assign homework so that you don't forget how to do what we teach you in class."

"I'm not going to forget," he said, the sharp gesture exasperated. "I don't need practice, either? Okay? I aced the pre-final, didn't I? No problem there."

She sighed, obviously just as irritated and tired of the entire situation as he was. She got up and her shoes clip-clopped on the floor as she strode to the door, grasping the handle. "Your father should have made you promise to _keep_ your grades up," she said darkly, clearly remembering how he'd begged for make-up work and extra credit, since he'd done the math and known that her class was the only one he would be able to drag up out of low-B land. There had been an upcoming project in History, which he was decent at anyway because of all the times they went over the material, and Sam never had a problem having an A in Art, except that they were doing landscapes and he hated landscapes, but it was easy to actually _do_ the assignment and get those A's.

He didn't tell her his dad was a _pushover_, and he had bigger things to worry about right now. Instead, he just looked at her, grasping the strap over his shoulder and listening to the nearly empty halls outside.

Finally, she twisted the knob, and sighed again. "It's good that you've been able to understand the material so much more, Mr. Witwicky, but I wish you'd do your homework anyway. Humor me. I don't know how you managed to make a hundred percent, and I certainly didn't teach you those shortcuts -- and you won't tell me. Just ... go home, Mr. Witwicky. Have a good afternoon."

The thing was, Sam wasn't sure _where_ those shortcuts came from. He'd been looking at the numbers on the test page and then it just seemed _obvious_ to rearrange them into a different order, and that number didn't _have_ to be that value, it'd work a lot cleaner if he shifted some of that value over to _this_ numeral, and if he did _this_ now, then he could completely forget about having those three function signs completely, and the answer was roughly 'B'. He stepped past her, head ducked to hide the memory of just looking at the equations and figuring that it'd be a lot easier just to _shift things around_ so it fit better, and work _cleaner_ --

"Yeah," he said, pausing briefly before she could close the door, "you, too."

After it became clear that was _all_ he was saying, she sighed again and closed the door.

The hall seemed long and echoing and _empty_, absolutely alone in a skeletal building of concrete and steel, he began to walk. Remembering the obvious way that the numbers should be shifted, when math wasn't his best subject and he'd done all of the make-up work and extra credit with a T81 scientific calculator. It had been the one lesson he'd taken notes on, how to use them, because he knew it would be what would get him through math classes for the rest of his life.

He breathed out and inhaled deeply, releasing that, only words came, too: "Yeah, well ... I don't know, either."

The confession made him nervous, and he shot a sharp look around, but there was no one to hear a truth as deceptively mild as that. No one was there to hear that there was something wrong with Mr. Witwicky's head, and he kept walking, and wondered where he was going.

-+-

Sam was pretty baffled the day he and Bee came home, and in Bee's normal parking space was a small car -- the Mazda emblem gleaming silver and proud -- of a pale icy blue color that sparkled under the sun. His mother was standing on the porch eyeballing it threateningly with her Judy Olivia Taylor Baseball Bat of 'Don't Touch My Baby' Smiting in hand. She looked a lot like those old movies of the father sitting on the rocking chair on the porch with his gun across his lap, Sam realized a little hysterically, looking at the source of her agitation. The tiny convertible continued to sparkle harmlessly.

Actually, now that he took a closer look, that was a particularly _familiar _'I'm totally harmless, just an inanimate object, of course, nothing to worry about' sparkle.

Bumblebee coasted to a stop in front of the house, in the streets -- which was technically a _no-go_, but with a car in the driveway that his mother was glaring at, there was little other choice. "Friend of yours, Bee?" he inquired, popping open the door and sliding out. The fact that Bumblebee even let him spoke volumes, but he still stood in the protective embrace of the door, one hand on the roof and the other on the door. Before he got a chance to reply, his mother noticed them.

"Oh, Sam, honey!" his mother called in relief. "It just showed up an hour ago, all by itself." She gestured to it with the bat, now looking much more secure and threatening. "Is it a good one or a bad one?"

Bumblebee's radio sputtered and then a man's voice crooned, "_I've got friends!_" before flipping off.

"Oh my god, Bee," Sam muttered. "That's a song about a bunch of guys killing themselves -- each other -- whatever!"

The engine thrumming thoughtfully before the car alarm chirped at him cheekily.

"Yeah, yeah," he said as he snapped the door closed gently. "It's fine, mom!" he called, trotting up the path. "It's one of Bumblebee's friends. Put - the bat - away."

His mother pursed her lips and narrowed her eyes at the small car. "Camaros -- Miatas ... aren't any of your friends something _other_ than sports cars?"

"Umm," he said, reaching around her to coax the bat away from her. Her hands, while bony and frail looking, had a hold on the handle like a bulldog's teeth. "I think -- let go -- these are the only -- _honestly Mom, let go!_ -- ones, really." He finally twisted it out of her grip and they shared a fierce look before she frowned at the icy blue Miata.

"Well, how come the only ones _I_ ever see are sport cars? You're not driving too fast, are you? If you get a ticket --"

"_Mom!_"

"Well, you are a teenager, I expect you to be a bit reckless. Ron already had to bail you out of jail for using Mojo's pills --"

"_Mo-om_, cut it out!" He yanked open the front door. "Come on, _inside the house_ -- and I told you, I wasn't taking them, they tested me and _I'm clean_ -- Jesus Christ."

"Oh honestly," she huffed, stopping in the door way and giving him one of her looks of severe concern. "You've been so strung out ever since those Auto-computer-whatsits came to town --"

"Inside," he insisted.

"Maybe you should schedule more Happy Time -- whatever happened to that nice pretty girl we found in your room?"

"_Oh my God, Mom, no!_"

She huffed and shuffled inside, and he cast an embarrassed look over at the two Autobots who bore witness. Both sets of headlights flashed at him, and he made a strangled noise of despair and rubbed his free hand over his burning face before retreating inside. He set the bat aside, then peered out the door window. The icy blue Mazda and the yellow Chevy both sparkled harmlessly, radiating innocent inanimateness.

_Yeah right!_ Sam wasn't fooled. The last time he trusted an innocent looking car, it tried to kill him. With a snort, he turned away, shaking his head.

Of course, there was only so long that Sam was willing to ignore the fact that there was a strange Autobot in his driveway. He figured that after dinner would have given Bumblebee and the stranger enough time to get things settled and figured out, so the first chance he go, he went back outside to get the word on their new ally.

But maybe later would be a better time.

He hesitated outside the door, seeing how the two Autobots had arranged themselves in the street. There was no room for them to situate in any other manner that probably wouldn't have been awkward, so they were parked nose to nose ... rather close. Someone would have to back up if anyone was planning to go anywhere. As far as Sam knew, Cybertronians preferred their space because they needed a lot of room to move safely. He bit his lip, taking a step backward.

Well, a Miata was something like a toy car, and that particular shade of blue was more like metallic baby blue, and ... was this the equivalent of Bumblebee's girlfriend? Bumblebee and Sam had the discussion about Cybertronian lack of gender, and that Sam would probably have a hard time because there _were_ models that were shorter, slimmer, and more streamline with voices on a congruently higher register. But for a species that didn't reproduce, having genders was hardly an issue. From what Sam could tell, Bumblebee himself was barely a register and a slightly blockier stature away from that 'model'.

(Because Sam broke his brain over trying to understand the grammatical rules of the Cybertronian language quite often -- there were pronouns for model, apparently, like humanity only had two models: 'he' and 'she', but then there were models within models and -- ow.)

In either case, just as there was something off about a vehicle that was _projecting_ innocence, there was something about the lack of space there that made Sam feel (for the first time) as if he was doing something wrong where Bumblebee was concerned. He remembered how Mikaela mentioned that Bumblebee would probably like to see the others, and ... well, if this small car-shaped Autobot was a _friend_, or ... equivalent-of-a-girlfriend, then ...

Well, Sam didn't know what then. He just knew that he finished stepping back and closed the door as quietly as he could.

-+-

_He was walking through the night darkened street, All Spark clutched desperately to his chest. If he shrugged up his shoulders and tucked down his head, he could press his cheek against the burning heat and feel the crackling blue sparks that were shooting across it's surface tingle in his face instead of just in his hands, arms and chest. The darkness seemed less welcoming, a little colder, but the promising steps of the small Autobot behind him was reassuring, the whirl-click of his joints and the soft clink where the rubber on his feet didn't fully muffle the sound of his feet hitting the pavement. The end of the street was before him, silent cars and sleeping houses splotched with orange and blue on either side, and he couldn't see past the end but it was getting closer. _

_"Just a little further," the Autobot promised him, mechanical hand pressed gently to his back behind his shoulder. "The time is coming."_

_**I am coming.**_

_"I'm waiting," Sam admitted, and: "I'm scared."_

_"It'll all be fine," he promised. _

_**No harm shall befall you. Patience, Samuel James Witwicky. All in good time.**_

_"I'm waiting," he repeated helplessly. _

_"Not much longer," the familiar mechanical soothed. _

_The All Spark burned_.

-+-

Sam was going insane.

The first time it happened had been before bed, while he was sitting with Mom and Dad, watching a movie that had come on over the normal channels._ The Fast and the Furious_, as a matter of fact. Nice cars. He had to wonder what genre the Cybertronians would label it as. They weren't _cars_, after all, even though they looked like them. He didn't even know what kind of shapes they normally took! Did Cybertron have cars? It didn't look like it was too hospitable to anything with wheels, but was that smoldering sky and molten rivers _natural_, or a state of collapse?

Well, anyway, when all of the fun scenes were over, Sam left the movie and fully intended to go to bed, already in his pajamas and socks, heading for the stairs.

That was when he swore the new computer his parents had gotten moved.

For a good fifteen minutes, Sam stared frozen at it, beyond freaked out and worried that the little spastic glitch Frenzy had managed to get into his house and was now pretending to be the computer. However, he reasoned, the actual computer itself would require disposal. And, daring to glance away from the computer for a moment, he eyed the rest of the room.

No. No sign of any destroyed computer. With one last lingering frown of suspicion, he made his way upstairs.

That had been last night. Then he'd had that strange dream, with the strange voices, and while he was rushing around this morning ... well.

He thought he saw something move.

It had, understandably, disrupted his entire morning ritual, as he suspiciously hunted down every piece of electronic he could think of that the small bot might have fit in. When he reached the both relieving and frustrating conclusion that there was no little Decepticons in his house, it seemed to send him for the hills -- or rather, the door. A strange, nearly frantic eagerness drove him to complete his morning ritual and rush out to Bee, like someone fleeing a cemetery after a particularly frightening movie. (It was only once, he swore! It was all Miles idea, anyway -- as it normally was.)

Once outside and rushing to his friend's side, Sam forgot all about his worrisome optical illusions and paranoia, noting immediately that the blue Miata was gone. "Hey, Bee," he said as he slid into the cab of the Camaro, picking up on the nearly pensive air. "Where'd your friend go?"

"That was Arcee," Bumblebee said, starting up his engine and pulling out of the driveway. "I forwarded the coordinates so that she could meet up with Optimus Prime. I would have gone with her ..."

_Her?! Wow_, so there _was_ a femmebot? "But what?" Sam asked.

"Arcee received a private _encoded_ transmission," he answered slowly. "It was not safe to send out information on how to reach the Autobots here on Earth, so we only sent out the coordinates to the planet itself. While it will take a while to gather everyone together, it is the safest way to do so. Once on Earth, we should be able to locate one another. However, Arcee received coordinates to _your_ house, Sam."

"Say what?" he demanded.

"Yes," Bumblebee said. "That is why I've stayed behind. It was an unknown transmission; she's never communicated with them before, and is carrying a copy of this information to Optimus Prime to find out if he has any ideas."

"Why ... her, why my house?" he groaned, pinching his nose. That didn't really help, so he rubbed his neck instead.

"The information she was able to gather implied it was because she was the closest to Earth. There were no other known Cybertronians in the vicinity."

"In other words, you had to stay behind to protect me, in case it was some sort of plot," Sam summed up. He sighed heavily and leaned back against the warm leather seat. "I'm sorry, Bumblebee. It is the last week of school, though, so this Thursday we could meet up with everyone again. Or you could --" he controlled his wince, "-- put me under Ironhide's guard so you wouldn't have to worry."

" ... would you like Ironhide to watch over you?"

Sam puzzled at the neutral sound of Bumblebee's voice, but answered honestly, "Not really," he said. "Guy's a little intense, you know? Besides ..." He struggled with himself, trying to figure out a way to say it that wouldn't be presumptuous. Or sound stupid. _There's a mystical bond between a man and his car ... and a boy and his robot._ "Well, I've always felt safest with you," he blurted out, then could have slapped himself. In his rush to say something acceptable, he'd made a slightly different embarrassing admission. "What I meant was," he hurried forward, "that just because I'm still a target for anyone who isn't up to date on recent events or wants to -- bite their thumb at the Autobots doesn't mean you shouldn't be able to be around your -- friends."

Bumblebee abruptly swerved through traffic, instead of cruising at around normal speeds toward the school. Sam yelped in surprise, then in indignation as a corner was taken a little sharply to remain legal by traffic signal standards, and his giant robotic alien swerved to a halt in the parking lot of an abandoned store. The locks clicked in to place with an audible snap, and the engine made the equivalent of a thoughtful and satisfied murmur before sputtering off. "Sam," Bumblebee said in a no-nonsense tone, and it made Sam stop sputtering and he took his hands off the wheel. "You were very dedicated to the idea of us being friends, and against my better judgement, I -- succumbed. _Therefore_, Sam," he said, increasing the volume when Sam tried to object, "I find your presence comforting, not a burden. Yes, I have other friends. So do you. Watching out for you is not a burden, and it ... is pleasing to know that you consider yourself safest with me."

Sam just licked his lips, wordless, burning with that pleasant warmth. It was like having the All Spark inside him, he supposed. Not like Chernobyl. Not like that at all. It made him feel weird and soft, instead of hollow and sharp and hard. He felt like a machine when Chernobyl was burning, but the soft purring warmth made him feel human.

Not waiting for a response, the engine started again and the locks unlocked. Sam made a response anyway. "Yeah, but --" he wasn't sure how to reference what he saw, the two of them so close. He couldn't explain the perceived intimacy, didn't know how to ask for whatever information it was he was looking for. Instead, he made demands: "Well, just remember that as a friend, you can ask things of me, alright? I'll understand."

There were, he thought with trepidation, few things he wouldn't do to get that warm feeling again. And yet on the heels of that horrible certainty came another, even worse certainty: he might do many terrible things for that feeling, but he'd rather have Chernobyl and Bee, than warmth and _nothing_.

-+-

If Sam had ever thought that Cybertronians were _fundamentally_ different from humans, he had just been proven wrong. Very, very, wrong.

"Well," Mikaela whispered, watching Bumblebee grow increasingly agitated as they waited for Arcee to show up. "I think someone has a girlfriend."

"I do not!" Bumblebee protested, and it was _so_ weird to listen to his normally calm formal voice quicken and sharpen in indignation. It made his British accent even more obvious.

Even though Sam felt a little discomforted, a little -- a little twisted in his chest (but with how it took turns between being a reactor and being a star, he shouldn't be surprised that he got -- reflux, or whatever), he had to grin a little at the peculiarity of what he was witnessing. "Come off it, Bee," he cajoled, "we'd understand, don't we, Mikaela?"

"Of course we do," she said with that coy voice of thick satisfaction.

"No, you don't," Bee said, exasperated. Tensely, he added, "She's my girlfriend in the same way Mikaela was your girlfriend, when we first met."

Sam's lips made a small 'oh' shape and he bobbed his head in understanding.

"Aw, how cute," Mikaela gushed with faux enthusiasm.

"Knock it off," Sam murmured at her, head ducked. Bumblebee just made another one of his electronic noises that was not exactly unlike the whimper of a small dog. Truthfully, though, all of Bumblebee's small noises had nothing in common with anything they had heard before, and belonged in a unique category of it's own.

But it was still kind of amusing to watch Bumblebee wind himself up like that. Sam was pretty sure that the moment Arcee got there, he'd be like a completely different robot. Miles had gotten that way, though ... in the opposite direction. Miles was a bit of a goof when with friends, and then he turned into some weird suave debonair wannabe when he was trying to impress a girl: lower voice and strange abstract thoughts and all. Bumblebee was ... more like Sam, in that respect. Sam used to get something similar to hyper and mouthy when the rare episodes appeared that he worked up enough courage to talk to Mikaela ... though that was possibly because her boyfriend or girl friends were never far.

From the way that Bumblebee explained it, Arcee was a naturally active Autobot, which meant that the very last thing she wanted to do was sit around doing nothing. Sam would have expected such behavior of someone like _Ironhide_, but that was apparently not so. The spark that powered every Cybertronian was equal -- which meant that Bumblebee's soul ... his power source, what _drove_ him was capable of powering something as large as Optimus Prime. Naturally, this meant that many smaller model Cybertronians were less likely to remain inactive and many larger models were less excitable.

Of course, Sam broke his brain over trying to understand this as well, since no human language on earth was really appropriate to explain what sparks were and their effect on the body. Every time he thought he had it worked out, Bumblebee had to tell him that the way he was phrasing it implied things that were simply untrue. It was like comparing some terrier dog to a Labrador or a dolphin to a killer whale. Cybertronians had a complex auditory language, using sound wavelengths the same way a human used nonverbal communication. Sam thought that Bumblebee's engine sounded different and his gears or pumps were moving in emotional ways because they _were_. Of course, the human auditory organ wasn't nearly precise enough to hear the nuisances, and most of the 'inflection' going on was too high or low for humans to notice.

Which was part of the reason why Bumblebee was producing them on a level that he could hear. Apparently, the Autobot had been spending his hobby time learning Sam's auditory range. It was also why the Autobots had put out the effort to learn and mimic human nonverbal communication, as well as word inflection, which was a bit of a foreign concept to them when their entire body was the equivalent to a band that could simultaneously put meaning to words while at the same time projecting general mood. When inflection and expression was basically _music_ to them, the concept of changing how the words themselves were said was difficult.

It was also why they seemed to like 'dissonant' songs. It was their idea of comedy, to couple information with inflection that meant something else completely.

Accompanied with _that_ crash-course in Cybertronian habits, Bumblebee had produced more information on their culture as a whole. According to him, there were several different 'tribes' of Cybertronian, dependant on model. 'Like GM or Ford?' Sam had asked, and no, that wasn't right either. It didn't really matter which factory where had produced the shell that the spark lived within. Unlike a car, in which the Focus or an F-150 might have the same CD player or iPod accommodations, Bumblebee had a completely different set of wires than Optimus Prime or even Arcee, which meant that he belonged to a different tribe. No, that had nothing with how he looked -- models with the same basic structure could be part of Jazz's model and --

Well, anyway. Arcee and her lot preferred to listen to their own. She would acknowledge Optimus Prime's ultimate rank, but it was simply better for everyone involved (and caused less split hairs) for Optimus not to order her around, especially since they weren't currently in danger or at war. Arcee's leader, Elita-One, was apparently on her way, so there was little problem with Arcee scouting in the meantime.

This was also why most of Arcee's tribe was on the Autobot side. The Decepticons only had room for one leader, while Optimus (having been a ruler for some time on their planet) had plenty of experience dealing with the Cybertronian equivalent of state senators, and was also a familiar face. Well, that and most of them weren't terribly violent to begin with, and Optimus was only violent because he had no other choice. Or so Bumblebee said. Sam, being in high school, was well aquatinted with the idea of 'point of view', as was every other kid who had Mrs. Mallenois for English III. Crude jokes were made in abundance.

In either case, Mikaela and Sam were curious about a 'femmebot' and Arcee was willing to meet them. Sam sincerely hoped no one mentioned that he'd killed their ... beginning-and-end: the All Spark. He wasn't even Cybertronian, and it haunted his sleeping mind, so how must they feel about its loss when it was what they came from?

So Bumblebee went through the effort of setting up a meeting, and apparently he had gotten the coordinates from Optimus, who had scoped it out last month to wait at while he hijacked (with permission) a satellite to broadcast the signal up into space, calling for his people. (There was the worry of what they were going to do with an entire race of giant robots, but apparently they had agreed to mostly regroup around Earth for a few hundred years and try to find another planet to inhabit -- or sooner, if their exhaust proved harmful to the planet. It shouldn't, but introducing alien energy emissions could have strange effects.)

The spot that Optimus Prime had chosen for it's isolation -- well, it was isolated. That meant that there was no chance of just anyone seeing them, mostly because there was no easy way to get there. While this meant that it was pretty safe for the Autobots to unfold and stretch their legs, it also meant it was hell on Camaros and worse on Miatas -- or so Sam assumed. The Miata didn't look much like a power car. What happened if some of the long grass got tangled in the engine?

Then again, they were talking about giant shape shifting robotic aliens that _nonchalantly_ changed the very shape of their metal armor in the seconds it took to take on an alt-mode. At some point in time, the average person just had to shrug and allow that they weren't going to get it.

To this point, when Arcee finally did arrive, she did so upright and silently. Sam had an uncanny flashback to the nightmares he used to have in fourth grade, when he found out that there had been giant carnivorous ostriches in Australia back in the day. Jurassic Park the movie did little to help this matter, especially when they gave the velociraptors feathers on their head.

As a femme, she wasn't that obvious. At least to humans, anyway, who were accustomed to soft curvy shapes indicating females. True to Bumblebee's explanation of 'femmes', she mostly looked _fast_ and nimble. There was no bust or hips -- no more than the regular Cybertronian (though come to think of it, Bumblebee had quite the hourglass figure -- and Sam was ignoring that, thanks anyway), which made sense: they weren't _mammals_, never mind _organic_! She didn't need wide hips to pass children through, or breast to feed it with! Her legs definitely sounded like they had dozens of more gears, though, and were bulky and lean and long. After seeing all the Autobots and Decepticons who had huge barrel-chests, it was strange to see a Cybertronian who was fairly lean on top and powerful in the legs. She was tall enough to come to the Camaro headlights on Bumblebee's chest and had the same strangely graceful way of moving -- well, mostly the same. After all, Sam didn't have flashbacks to nightmares when looking at the _other_ Autobots. Maybe Arcee was just that scary, and no amount of cutesy metallic baby blue armor was going to change that.

"Bumblebee," she greeted -- and yeah, femme was right. They were going to be cursed with 'she' whether they liked it or not.

"Hi, Arcee," he returned, shifting on his feet. Bee quickly gestured to the humans. "This is Sam Witwicky, my ward, and Mikaela Banes who is currently Ratchet's student."

"Student, huh?" Arcee echoed, placing her claw-like hands on her hip plates as she shifted her stance. Looking down at the two humans, her various facial components moved in a benign way -- probably a smile -- while hidden motors purred in a friendly way. "Poor kid. I assume you haven't had to learn from the Hatchet directly."

" ... the Hatchet?" Mikaela echoed weakly. She had the same expression of polite if baffled disbelief she had when Bumblebee first introduced himself.

"Ratchet is known for having a temper," Bumblebee explained with embarrassment. "Especially with those who repeatedly get injured. He's a bit notorious ..."

"Notorious like a turbofox," Arcee said, amusement obvious in the clicking of her gears. Returning her attention to the two humans, she explained: "Optimus Prime's group is a bit notorious anyway -- a bit like Elita-One's chosen. Saying Ratchet is well known is like saying ..." she apparently cross referenced through the Internet, "this Catwoman character is notorious. It's more like _infamous_."

" ... great," Mikaela said weakly. It was not lost on either humans that Catwoman was really a gray character -- neither good nor evil.

Arcee derived some sort of cruel pleasure from this, Sam was sure. He was becoming a bit alarmed by his friend's taste in women, and wondered if it was too late to hide behind Bee. Unfortunately, that was just about when she decided to take note of him, her blue optics flickering slightly in a way that he was sure meant that there was some scanning or referencing going on somewhere in her head.

"And you're the Witwicky kid, huh?" she inquired, swiveling to face him more directly. He nodded numbly, and she looked up to cocked her head at Bumblebee. "You _sure_ this fleshling really helped out?"

And wow, Sam had never heard _that_ sound before. It was a strange hissing, not quite white noise or air from a tire, but it was the only comparisons that Sam could make -- and it was coming from Bumblebee. "Sam was willing to die to protect the All Spark, Arcee," Bumblebee said, voice strangely flat -- and it seemed pretty damned likely he was using some of that audio communication that humans couldn't hear. "He denied Megatron just as any _Autobot_ would have."

Arcee straightened and leaned away slightly, holding up both of her hands and making a pushing motion. "Alright, calm down," she said, then added something in sputtering crackles of static and car-alarm chirps. When she continued in English, her voice was slightly sulky. "I was 'teasing', anyway. I know timid characters when I see them -- and I shouldn't need to remind you that I should also know not to underestimate timid 'bots, too."

Sam wondered if this was a rerun of the 'why does the super-advanced robot turn into a piece of crap Camaro?' incident from the other side. He scratched his neck in uncertainty and shared helpless looks with Mikaela. "Is there a story we should know behind that?" he wondered. "Do they have an Autobot equivalent to the Hulk? 'You won't like me when I'm angry'?"

Both bots had to cross reference that, which was a bit surprising. He used the Hulk because he thought they would have already had the pop culture downloaded.

" ... the Hulk's normal persona is not timid," Bumblebee said, sounding baffled.

Giant walking super computers did not understand approximation, apparently. "Never mind."

After a few more moments of staring at them in puzzlement, the two shared a few quick words in their native language before Arcee switched back to English. "By the way," she said coyly, "when Ratchet gets around to the upgrades, specifically the XPOS, I think I'm going to wait until after _you_ go."

A slight muffled whirling sound began somewhere in Bumblebee's chest. "I don't need upgrades," he said.

"Baby."

"XPOS?" Mikaela cut in, perhaps seeing just exactly where such a conversation was going. So could Sam, but he wasn't quite sure if they _wanted_ to be interrupted.

"Like Optimus Prime has," Arcee explained.

"Part of my mission was to collect information like that," Bumblebee said, looking down at them. "I transmitted the information back to Ratchet, who then implemented it to create the human-like face Optimus Prime sports. He specifically requested it, as we hoped to remain at peace with the humans -- especially when we discovered how sapient you were."

"So it's like learning the local customs and native language," Sam summarized tentatively. Just about every time he had tried to understand Cybertronian motive, he'd ended up being wrong.

"_That_ is dedication," Mikaela said.

"It makes sense," Arcee said flippantly. "Humans are less likely to attack what they can empathize with."

_Except that he'd been screaming and they didn't care -- even though they stopped quickly enough when he was yelling at them to __**stop**__, to __**let him go**__, they were still spraying that ice and he was screaming and they didn't stop_. Sam ducked his head and rubbed at his scalp, and knew that his knuckles were white.

"And you don't want this 'XPOS'?" Mikaela asked.

"It's not that," Bumblebee said defensively.

"Then what is it?" Arcee taunted. "Should I go first? I mean, if it would _help_ to have a bot of my model go first?"

"Model has nothing to do with it! And I don't see how such an upgrade would appeal to you, anyway."

"Hey, just because I'm a shoot-first kinda bot doesn't mean I'm not interested in the shiny extras. There's nothing to shoot -- I might as well get new toys."

Sam was _seriously_ starting to doubt Bumblebee's taste in women.

-+-

Still mulling over Arcee and the afternoon spent listening to the two bots bicker -- which was strange in its own right -- Sam wandered into his house and into the living room, noting his father at the computer. "Hey, given up yet?" he asked with amusement.

"No," his dad said lightly, turning in the chair to cast him an exaggeratedly nonchalant cocky look. "Actually, I haven't been having any problems at all."

" ... wow, really?" Curiously, he came over to look at the monitor, absentmindedly setting his hand on the tower. It was warm to the touch and vibrated faintly under his fingers. To his surprise, it seemed like his father really was getting something done ... which ... was, apparently, ordering stuff off online stores. "Wow," he repeated dryly, idly patting the computer. When he realized what he was doing, he stilled his hand, vaguely embarrassed. Bumblebee seemed to have gotten him in the habit of being ... er, nice to electronics, even when they didn't have a spark. With one last pat, he withdrew the limb and tucked it safely away into a pocket.

"I don't know why I've had so much difficulty before," Ron continued, almost half to himself. "I always find what I'm looking for with this one."

Sam wasn't really paying attention to what his father was saying, though. Instead, he was staring in affront at the corner of the flat-screen monitor. "What the hell is this?" he demanded.

"Language," his father said sternly, then glanced at that. " ... I mentioned to your mother that the computer was named Gateway."

He continue to stare in horror at the glittery holographic sticker letters and flowers that curved around the corner of the screen. The truth was that Sam and Ron were much more familiar with glitter and stickers and sequins and -- and _rhinestones_ popping up than any healthy male should. Up until Sam bought his first backpack in junior high, he'd gone to school with a backpack that proclaimed that it belonged to a Samuel Witwicky in eye blinding colors. And when he didn't lock the door, sometimes his other things popped up with that crap on them, and laundry day was always nerve wracking --

" ... what did the computer ever do to deserve this?"

"I don't know, son," Ron said, staring morosely at the pink and purple letters. "I just don't know."

"This has gone on long enough," Sam said fiercely. "It's time to start a rebellion -- a _revolution_!"

"Now, now," his father said, turning to look at him warily. "Let's not get ... carried away."

He considered it. "Are we having lasagna tonight?"

Ron picked up the bottle of anti-acids that were standing out of view and rattled it at Sam, the large chalky multi-colors pills rattling slightly.

"Then ... the revolution shall wait," he said reluctantly.

"Atta boy, Sam," Ron said fondly. "Choose your battles."

Sam reflected wryly that while he was unwilling to skip lasagna night, he was apparently willing to fall off tall buildings to protect ancient alien artifacts. Choosing his battles, indeed.

* * *

- Rena1 and I discussed that Judy is likely a bling _ninja_.

- Just a reminder: no such thing as 'femmebot'. Robots don't has a gender. Arcee's a woman the way Jazz is black. The robots, when they come down, they develop a human identity that they feel represents them, and the other robots respect that. Most of the smaller bots have vocalizers on a higher register, so it tends to be easier to mimic a woman's voice. Just like Bumblebee doesn't sound like the Governator.

- Ratchet used to be a civilian mechanic on Cybertron, doing his share of body transplants and reconstructive surgeries. Considering the HIGHLY adaptive technobiology of Cybertronians, he probably knew a fairly good way to induce the growth of a 'facial' construct.


	7. the Storm

**Chapter Seven: ... the Storm  
**"And I'd be like a ... zombie. Skeleton. Animated Skeleton. But only in moonlight. You know, then your life would be _really_ interesting -- giant alien robots and cursed pirate treasure and -- wereskeletons."

-+-

_The night was dark and deep as he walked down the middle of the glistening street, moonshards glittering and show lights of orange and blue spattering the scene like precision airbrush spots. The houses were dark -- empty -- and the vehicles parked alongside silent houses and lining the streets were mute and sleeping. The gentle and soothing whirl click of Autobot movement (contentment, calm) behind him was a familiar accompaniment to the unyielding corner and edges of the All Spark in his arms, burning hot and bright while it sparked with blue energy. They walked down the middle of the street to the end he couldn't see past, and it only got a little closer for the several yards he must be walking. _

_"I won't be able to take it," he said earnestly. _

_"It'll work out fine," the Autobot assured him. _

_**No harm shall come to Samuel James Witwicky.**_

_"It'll drive me insane," he refuted. "I'll end up in a institute like Captain Archibald. Or worse."_

_"Never," he promised. _

_**Trust in progress. Believe in design.**_

_You're not infallible. _

_"This won't go wrong."_

_**Infallibility is false. Precision is undeniable. Process is recorded. Advancement cannot be reversed.**_

_Is that how --_

_-- but then the All Spark clattered against the pavement because the skin on his left arm was _splitting_ and _peeling away_ and he could see where his bones should be but they were metal struts instead and sparking wires and his skin kept splitting and his flesh was burning away and it was _Frenzy's_ arm where his should be and it clawed into his stomach to reach his spine and _gripped it --

For the first time in his life, he woke up shouting. It was also the first time that he wrapped a blanket around his shoulders despite the heat and left his bedroom. Normally, he'd just stay in the comfortable hot cushion on his bed, but his skin crawled and he wasn't feeling tired like he normally did. Padding silently through the dark house with socked feet, he wandered around through the kitchen and the living room, wanting neither water nor the couch. For a moment, he sat in front of the sleeping computer, staring at the softly flickering lights as the screen saver scrolled the time (3:13 PM ... 3:14 PM ... 3:15 PM ...), fans whispering quietly as they pulled hot air away from machinery and spat it out vents.

The desire to touch the thing was strong, which was weird. Sam blinked blearily at it for a few more minutes before deciding that it was probably because it was warm like the All Spark he enjoyed carrying in his dreams. (He did like carrying the All Spark. It was warm and hot and the night dreams were peaceful ... except for tonight.) Grudgingly, and because he was exhausted, he gave into the urge and reached out to pet the computer a few times, and then -- because it seemed right -- he switched over and petted the monitor as well. Then, thoroughly disturbed with himself, he got up and left the desk behind. If he was going to pet things, it might as well be something that could appreciate it. He paused at the door to slip on his mother's garden shoes just to protect his socks from the dew that would undoubtedly be on the grass, and slipped out of the house to approach Bumblebee.

The obscenely pink and sparkly foam 'gator' shoes squeaked across the wet grass, conflicting rather violently with his green pajamas. Thankfully, his sheet was a neutral cream and oh, my God, why was he worried about how he looked? He'd only been awake for ten minutes, it was the middle of the night, he was _visiting his car_, and he'd just had a nightmare!

Moodily, he didn't even wait to see if Bumblebee was awake or for him to open the door if he was. He just slipped his fingers into the door latch, popped it open, then abandoned the wet gator shoes to scramble into the Camaro and over the seats and into the back. The door shut behind him of Bumblebee's accord, and the car rocked slightly as if he were getting comfortable on his wheels. After all, wheels or not, Sam was not heavy enough to move Bumblebee if he didn't want to be moved.

"Sam?"

"Hmm?" he grunted, squirming to get settled into the back.

"You should be sleeping."

It was nice that Bumblebee found it necessary to remind him. "I am," he informed the Autobot, rearranging his sheet to cover his feet and squirming a bit more to get comfortable. He made an embarrassingly undignified noise when the backseat shifted, but then realized that the slight incline that made it okay to sit in but terrible to lay on had leveled out. "See?" he said with triumph, flopping down to rest his head on his folded arm.

"I was under the impression you had a perfectly good bed in the house," Bumblebee said doubtfully.

"Prolly do," he slurred, already drowsy. "But I got one here. Better company, too."

The engine hummed thoughtfully for a moment before it quieted. It was dark outside and the night was quiet but for the distant sounds of the city, a siren wailing in the distance. His previous upset and mussed confusion soothed into a heavy contentment, like a heavy blanket weighing down on him. A small part of him wondered at it -- thought that it should be claustrophobic, that it should be hard to breathe -- but for the most part, it soaked through him until he was lulled into a solid dreamless sleep.

-+-

It was around ten in the morning before Sam decided he had slept enough ... mostly because his stomach had stopped being polite about it's emptiness and had begun to eat itself. He'd been waking up on and off since the sun came up, but since he was so comfortable and Bumblebee didn't seem inclined to persist in playing music loudly to wake him up, the sun was beyond up.

"Alright," he mumbled, sitting up and engaging in the acrobatics required to move from the back seat to the front. "Alright. I'm up. I guess."

"I don't see why you are," Bumblebee said, "if you just wait a few more hours, you will have acquired nearly double the recommended amount of rest."

Sam seriously considered it for a moment, but satisfied himself with kicking the seat and saying, "smart ass." Sleeping in Bumblebee was awesome, because he didn't dream at all, so excuse him for liking it.

_" -- my friends say I should act my age -- what's my age again? What's my age again?"_

"Oh, I don't know," Sam said thoughtfully, "but I think you're an old fart to our way of thinking.

Bumblebee's radio squeaked and blared out some static in protest. Sam smiled a little as he swept his hand across the dashboard, brushing away imaginary dust before he slipped his feet into the gator shoes and flopped into the house. He took a nice hot shower and moseyed off into the kitchen to grab a bite to eat before he left for the day, intending to go hang with Bumblebee or Mikaela or both, if at all possible. Eating out was really tearing into his funds, and though it was true that at least Bumblebee didn't need gas, not everyone was so lucky. So it was that his mother found in him the kitchen wolfing down the last of his sandwich with a soda open on the table.

"Oh, good morning, Sam. Are you back now?"

"Not yet," he mumbled, picking up the soda and attempting to drain it swiftly. Carbonation never really worked with that whole 'chug' thing, though, and he didn't really succeed at all.

His mother smiled a little too brightly. "I hardly ever see you anymore, even though schools' out ..."

"I guess," he said, every last shred of teenage intuition warning him of the rocky road they were on.

But his mother just smiled, picking up the plate and the knives he'd used for the mayo and mustard, and went to the sink to wash them. Sam hesitated a moment longer, then went back to trying to drink his soda. It was just as he was finishing it off and getting ready to toss the can in the recyclables box that it happened.

"Sam ... do you think they have souls?"

"Of course they do," he said immediately, no thought necessary, no question about it -- not even lost on the subject of who or _what_. Blinking twice, he truly registered the question and frowned slightly as he turned to look at her. "Why do you ask, Mom?"

She wasn't looking at him. "It's nothing, honey," she said, but she sounded distracted and even he could tell that she was dissatisfied or she found the answer inconclusive. "I was only thinking," she suddenly added, then stopped, as if thinking better of it.

But Sam wasn't so easily shaken off course. Reluctantly, he said, "about what?" And it came out like a warning. He didn't know what he felt suddenly that he had to face this thing head-on, but there was a reckless churning that drove him into it like anyone who knew they were digging their own grave and yet couldn't put the shovel down.

"Well ... how do you _know_ that? How can you tell they have a soul? What makes you so sure ... that they aren't just ... _pretending_ to be alive?"

It was a bit like running your head into a cabinet door. At first, you were mostly surprised, and then realization set in. For someone who had been spending so much of his time reflecting on _what had happened to him _and _what had been done to them_, the question was nearly ridiculous. So excuse him if he sounded slightly stunned when he said, "what makes you so sure _we_ have a soul?"

It was such an absurd question that the moment it was out his mouth, he snorted. "You know," he added, darkly, "their soul is a spark, Mom. And we don't have one of those."

She was actively avoiding his gaze, not looking up, with her lips drawn into thin lines. "We aren't machines, either."

Muscles flexed in his jaw, and his throat worked as he looked out toward the living room, wishing he was stepping out the door -- but there was something, as he shoved away from the counter and took a few steps away, that kept him from leaving the way he _knew_ he should. Instead, he tried to recover the lost ground, uncertain if he was retreating or what was happening in the kitchen. It was a struggle to keep his voice even and his expression neutral as he tried to remind her, "you know, I didn't ask for you or Dad to _understand_." But he failed, because there was some sort of warning there in the words, a hint of what he was feeling inside -- that this was a thing that was _nonnegotiable_.

He could easily imagine the stern look on her face, but he didn't turn to check it. "I just don't want you hurt, Sam." And she sounded so reasonable, like he was the one at fault. "You're awfully attached to that Camaro."

As if it was _only_ a Camaro -- there the ground beneath his feet was unstable and treacherous, but it was such a honest, powerful thought. "_Mom_," he snapped, turning finally to meet her eyes sternly. "He's an _alien_. He's _my friend_. Stop trying to -- to label him like he's something that came out of a box, or like anything we've ever seen."

And Sam thought that he knew aliens, that he knew what was what and which things in his life were sure -- but the look that his mother had on her face as she met his eyes was unfamiliar and _strange_ ... it was a hard look, and her tone was diamond sharp and unfamiliar. "You don't know that," she said, so deathly _certain_. "You don't know if that thing's the alien ... or the technology."

The worst thing about what she said was that it touched something deep within Sam ... that thing that made him lunge across the table all those months ago and punch the oh-so-reasonable therapist who had dared to suggest that Sam thought that the Autobots _might not be on their side_. (Because even though he felt it -- really _felt it_, that connection, that _understanding_ and that _oneness_ that spanned even light years and galaxies ... so deep in the hindbrain he was almost unaware of it at all, he still _knew_ they were alien, and maybe they wouldn't want to, but _they might not be on humanity's side_. It might make them sad, but they might do it anyway .... )

It began at the core, deep within him, past even Chernobyl (and maybe it was some secret human thing, or maybe it was _something else_) ... a quiver that built and shook until it erupted in a twitch of his fingers toward a fist that never formed, a spasm of muscles under the skin of his mouth, and his nostrils flared as he breathed out low and slow. It was a silent physical reaction of restraint, heralding _over-heating, atom powered reaction, death_. His pronunciation was flawless, his tone deathly even, his face still as a statue, and he asked so very _carefully_: "How do you know if we're anything more than stupid animal meat?"

The words fell flat and unforgiving and unforgivable on the linoleum floor, and his mother was looking at him, and he was looking at her. Then he said, "Anyway, I'm going out with Bee to see Mikaela. I'll be back before ten."

Her eyes narrowed, and her voice was hard beyond anything he had heard from _anyone_. It was worse and more terrible than Megatron's had ever even _thought_ to be as she said: "We are not through here, Samuel."

Sam only looked at her for a moment, certain he could control himself that long, but it was uncontrollable -- the expression that flashed across his face like the shards of glass breaking and spinning as they slid across the floor. "We're _very_ done here. See you later."

The door close with a crisp snap just shy of a slam.

-+-

"It turns out that one of the components that make up the Cybertronian alloy is actually highly conductive, but that another component actually produces a negating effect," Mikaela explained as she wolfed down the burger that Sam had brought her. "It's insanely complex -- we don't have concepts for the Cybertronian sciences, _especially_ the technobiological aspects. Nothing on earth behaves like their alloy does, and the closest that Ratchet can come to explaining it is something like cuttlefish skin."

" ... cuttlefish skin? What's a _cuttlefish_?"

"It's a mollusk without a shell. It changes colors."

" ... this is relevant to giant space robots, _how_?"

Mikaela sat there with a deep frown on her face before slowly trying to verbalize it. "According to Ratchet, cuttlefish have several different layers of pigment on their skin, with muscles attached ... when the muscles pull the pigment taunt, then we see the color change. And ... somehow ... _somehow_ this is relatable to how Cybertronian feel, and can control their sensory input on the dermal plating."

" ... what."

"Well, you have a component that's highly conductive, right? Electricity _loves_ it. There's also a component that isn't conductive _at all_. They coexist in their metals -- they're made entirely out of alloy, remember -- and a portion of their massive processing power is spent on ... charging or uncharging those components. So, they can feel us, because humans have electrical pulses, too -- but they can also easily survive being thrown on an electric power plant. Portions of their dermal plating becomes hypersensitive in response to us touching them, while it can reverse and become nearly inert to fend off the massive input of a power surge."

Sam kicked his feet off the side of the railing they were sitting on, his meal already finished since Mikaela had been doing most of the talking. "So, they ... 'feel' through electrical impulses?" He screwed up his face. "Exactly how sensitive is that?"

"Well, pain is an abstract concept for them, with the exception of temperature," she explained, then winced slightly, as he did. It was so stupid that Sector Seven was _still_ such a sensitive subject, but ... seeing something sentient that had been _protecting_ them being _tortured_ ... it was pretty traumatic. "Because temperature means that atoms are moving very fast or very slow, and sudden changes tend to create instability in otherwise stable structures, it's pretty obvious why they find it painful. They run at a pretty high temperature already, so suddenly slowing that down is pretty bad. Of course, as long as it's gradual, it's not that bad. According to Ratchet, with enough of a gradual change, they could actually function fine in Arctic conditions. They guess that Megatron actually went into an emergency stasis thing, which is a bit of a two-edged sword. On one hand, it meant that he wasn't suffering the sudden cooling. On the other hand, as long as the condition that _caused_ the stasis remained unchanged, he couldn't come out on his own."

"Wow," Sam said, blinking, "so really the only reason Sector Seven managed to keep him contained at all was because of a lucky guess."

"Just about," she agreed with a grimace. "So, perhaps it's not a surprise that they don't have any big fans."

He made an emphatically agreeable noise, looking out at the tin and cement and dust. Mikaela practically lived out on the base these days, and ... well, so did he, a little. He spent a lot of the day at the base, wandering around aimlessly while she studied and sharing lunch with her until his ride came back and they could hang out at the park or go home if it were too late.

"So," Mikaela said in a leading way, "what do you think of Arcee?"

He echoed her wonderingly. "What do you mean by that?" he asked with a slight frown. "She's pretty cool. A bit of a spunky action girl, but ..." he shrugged. "What?"

Mikaela chewed her straw while studying him, eyebrow cocked, and then shrugged nonchalantly. "Nothing," she said, looking out toward the empty scenery.

A little puzzled, he blew it off anyway. "So, Autobot touch," he said, trying to get the conversation back on subject. "Do you have any idea of range?"

"Range?" she echoed, focusing on him with a small skeptical frown. "You mean like how sensitive their alloy is? Well, the strange thing about it, Ratchet's actually used me to measure, in a way. They aren't a terribly tactile species -- no reason to be, that's a warm blooded trait -- but they can definitely feel each others' touch. It has to do with the charge of the alloy. The mild electrical charges interact, so they're about like we are in that respect. Inanimate objects aren't 'touch' though -- metallic alloys are also very resonant, so their awareness of things like --" she grinned with amusement, "Mojo _lubricating_ on them, or a pebble bouncing off their leg is actually due to the minute vibrations in their bodies."

"So ... like a drum?"

"Yeah, I guess so," she said, nodding. "But, this is the really neat and bizarre part -- they can feel us, too. Apparently, even though we're organic, we also produce a type of electrical charge that Cybertronians can feel. So, where you could set a rock on Bumblebee's hood, and he'd know it would be set there, he could actually _forget_ about it until it fell off or grated against his alloy. Difference is that if you were to sit on him, he'd get constant electrical feedback, 'feeling' you, like ..." she reached out and grabbed the bare skin of his hand. "Like that. You feel my skin. They feel you." His stomach jerked strangely and he arched his eyebrows while clearing his throat. She flashed him a secretive look before pulling away, saying in a strangely nonchalant way: "You might want to talk to Bumblebee about that -- Ratchet told me he was your culture tutor."

"Culture tutor?" he echoed incredulously. "I wouldn't call it _that_. I mean, yeah, we talk about each others culture, and I've learned to inter -- pet ..." He sighed. "Okay, I have a culture tutor." It was just that putting it that way made it seem less fascinating that it really was. Bumblebee explained things to him, the vibrations of his engine and voice trembling through his bones, while Sam envisioned Cybertron as it must have been, once.

"Maybe you can be Optimus Prime's interpreter," she said with a laugh. "The other Autobots seem rather puzzled by the whole thing, anyway."

"Well, it's not like we started out intending to teach each other that stuff," he said defensively. "He started it, really, when he started asking about death and why humans don't wrap themselves in cushions and bubble sheets."

"Bubble wrap."

"Whatever. He still started it."

"And you still speak giant robot."

"Correction: I am becoming _fluent_ in giant robot."

"Witwicky, you'll be lucky if you ever get a girlfriend."

"I've got a _Camaro_, Mikaela. A _Camaro_."

"I think it's more like the Camaro has _you_."

"This is not Soviet Russia."

" ... what?"

"Er -- Never mind. You know, you may be right about that girlfriend thing."

She made noncommittal but _meaning_ laden noise, eyebrows arched in a politely ironic expression as she stared at the scenery. What _that_ for?

-+-

were u trying 2 make a pet human joke?

Dont txt me Sam. If you didnt get it Im not telling you.

plz?

No Sam. Also, learn grammar, kthxbi

youre mean mikaela

Love you too. Now stop txting me.

-+-

_"I refuse to wear that!"_

_Sam sighed as he stepped in the door, taking in the sight of Mikaela in a auto-shop jumpsuit yelling at the busty blonde in a nurse outfit that was a little too small and had a lot less material that it probably should have to be dignified _or_ sanitary. The blond looked fairly ticked off as well. "I'm telling you," she said in a deep, raspy, manly voice. "It's part of the job description! If you're going to be a mechanic, you have to dress the part! Otherwise, how will anyone know you can fix them, huh?"_

_"I don't care! I'll never wear that!" Mikaela yelled, shaking her fist._

_"Mikaela, Ratchet, would you two please cut it out?" Sam asked, sighing. _

_"Tell him I'm not wearing that!" she demanded, pointing at the blonde._

_"Ratchet, Mikaela will never wear an outfit like that. But you could probably get her into a jumpsuit that was white with red crosses," he said, shifting the All Spark against his leg. _

_"Hmm," Ratchet said thoughtfully. "I shall have to consider that."_

_"Droids," he said with amusement to the only other organic._

_"Like you're one to talk, cyborg-boy," she said, rolling her eyes. _

_He looked down at the arm holding the All Spark Cube against his left hip. Gunmetal gray and powerful, it gleamed dully in the light. "Oh, I forgot," he said, a little surprised to see all the wires and metal plates instead of flesh. It fit seamlessly against his skin and flesh, as if it had just stopped being carbon cells and started being alloy one day, instead of being welded on to a structure implanted on his bone. At least, he thought it was. Wasn't it? Skin just didn't turn into metal. That wouldn't make any sense. _

_"Great," Mikaela snorted, rolling her eyes and distracting him from his study of his shoulder. "I can't believe you forgot when you see the kind of flawless I wish I could be. She better hold him tight, give him all her love; look in those beautiful eyes and knows she's lucky 'cause -- he's the reason for the teardrops on my guitar! The only thing that keeps me wishing on a wishing star."_

_He stared at her in bemusement then looked at Ratchet who hadn't seemed to have noticed. _

_"This ain't a song for the broken hearted," Ratchet informed him, frowning slightly and putting a hand to his forehead. "Silent prayer for faith departed. I ain't gonna be just a face in the crowd -- gonna hear my voice when I shout it out loud --"_

"Sam, wake up, honey."

He woke (groggily) to the thin paper-dry and cold hand on his forehead. Squinting through his eyelashes, he finally made out the shape of the person who was now smoothing his hair. "Mom?"

"You fell asleep on the couch," she said softly.

Glancing sideways, he realized it was true. It wasn't completely accidental, either, or otherwise he'd be mostly upright. He didn't remember laying out on the couch, but he was so tired. It was hard to remember that he needed to stay out of the way and make as little about his strange new habits as possible. No one really knew how much he was sleeping (or how deeply), nor did they know just how much food he was consuming. But ... it had just become so hard to remember that he shouldn't worry anyone. It didn't seem worth it to hide something that no one would probably notice.

"You're running a slight temperature," his mother murmured.

"I'm not sick," he said, waking up a little more. He knew that. He was perfectly healthy, no germs or grit or infection or wounds, everything was going as it should be, though he had the niggling feeling that he _was_ hot and needed to drink some water to cool down a little. As long as his mother didn't touch his torso, she wouldn't notice all the heat through the many layers he was wearing.

"Maybe not," she sighed, and she looked so sad.

"What's wrong, Mom?" he asked before he thought. He wasn't sure yet if he had forgiven her for the talk they had a few days ago when Bee had woke him up and sent him back into the house.

His mother smiled, and it really didn't look like much of one at all. "Nothing's wrong, Sam. Come on, wake up." She patted his cheek and stood. "I made some tea. It's in the kitchen."

"Alright," he said. Tea wasn't exactly his most favorite drink, but it promised to be iced, and would help cool him down a little. Sugar, of course, could never hurt. Sitting up, he brushed a hand over his face and through his hair before he stood and stumbled off after his mother. She already had the glass of ice and was pouring the tea in from the pitcher.

"Here." She handed the glass off to him and moved the sugar from the cabinet to the island counter.

Sam was just about to take a drink when he realized she was watching him. His mother had always been a rather high strung individual, for all the hippy/New Age stuff she brought home and enforced on her husband and son. Now, though, she looked like she had aged dramatically and she seemed a little lost. "Mom," he said, "something's wrong. What is it?"

Judy shook her head and picked up her cup, wrapping one arm around her waist and propping the other on it before taking a drink from the steaming cup. Reliably, she always drank hot liquids when things really weren't right. "Honestly, Sam, it's nothing."

The iced tea did it's work, cooling him off quickly. It did have the rather obvious side effect of him drinking a little _too_ eagerly, but he was thirsty. "Right," he said dismissively. If he pretended ...

And it worked, of course. "You know," she said with a nostalgic look. "I still remember when we brought you home from the hospital."

_Oh great_, he thought, eyes skyward as he drank. It was one of _those_ talks.

"You were such a healthy baby," she went on with a small smile. "You had blue eyes, then -- most babies do. Such a _fussy_ baby, though. We could only get you to sleep if we drove around the neighborhood ... stopped more burglaries that way ..."

He bobbed his head distractedly. He had the misfortune of having taken Home Ec his sophomore year, so he knew that ... baby thing, where they could only sleep with motion sometimes. His mother had already told him about that.

Her smile turned brittle. "And now you're ... fighting giant robots and one is pretending to be your car."

Ah -- uh oh. Sam might not be completely awake, but he knew that there was something wrong.

"Are you sure you're fine, Sam?" Judy asked, a little desperate, a little hysterical. "I know Yellowbee and Optimism Dime promised to protect you, I've talked to them a lot, but are you _okay_? Are you sure you're not sick, or -- or depressed?"

Sam had a little bit of a problem for a moment, trying to stop from laughing at 'Yellowbee' and 'Optimism Dime' at the same time he was trying not to freak out at the sudden breakdown his mother might be having. "You -- you talked to them?" he asked.

"Of course I did!" she said indignantly and looked like she might cry. "My God, Ron and I thought you were sneaking that nice Mikaela girl in and you were -- you were trying to stop that Meglotron from getting some Spark Cube thing because of your father's grandfather, and -- oh, Sam, you're only seventeen and you've already been taken away from me! There are -- government agents and military captains and the _Secretary of Defense_, Sam, telling me I should be proud because you risked your life to stop some weapon from getting into enemy hands!" She was crying now. "My God, what's happened to our home? We were so _normal_!"

Awkwardly, he set the glass on the counter and stepped over to wrap his arms around her. "Mom, Mom, it's okay," he tried to tell her. "It's okay. Don't cry, Mom. Please don't cry."

"You were so young, Sam," she wept. "What happened?"

_My Dad bought me a Seventy-Six Camaro_, he thought. That was what changed. _My car chased me, and I met the definition of a 'bad cop'_. That was what changed. _Sector Seven kidnapped us all, lassoed down my protector and tortured him_, that was what happened. _"Listen to me! You're a soldier, now!"_ was what happened.

_"I'm never giving you this All Spark!"_

_The high animal screams of people running, and __**"Disgusting,"**__ the metallic pop and _that scream_ before it cut off with a clang._

That moment that smeared together into one scene -- the decision he made because he _understood the consequences_, because a civilian father had brainwashed his civilian child with a soldier's creed, because again and again, these aliens had saved him, and so he wanted to save them back. He had _understood death_ in that moment, and chose it over the bone melting cowardly fear of what Megatron could do to him. (And in the next second, his fears had been realized at someone else's expense.) That was what happened to the boy she used to know.

"I'm sorry, Mom," he said helplessly. "I'm sorry."

He was thankful that they had been locked up and sequestered and didn't have to see any of that. It was terrible enough without knowing that his _mother_ had to survive that, too. He didn't want anything happening to her. He didn't want her having _those memories_, or having nightmares like he did.

But as much as he didn't want them to share that, it meant there was that impassible wall between them. She might love him, but she'd never understand him or what he saw (_bodies in the streets_)-- heard (_that __horrible__ scream_) -- did (_he'd killed a sentient being, attacked it with every intention of making it _stop_ in any way he could, couldn't regret it because it was _evil_, but it couldn't _not _affect him_). The only people who could were the ones that were _there_.

He was sorry that the boy she raised was dead.

-+-

Sam's feet were going numb, but he was not complaining ... mostly because he was too busy snooping through the brand new and shiny pink phone in his hands. It was as he was going through the address book that he noticed something that gave him pause. Now who did Mikaela know with a last name of 'Boy'? He glanced at the first name, and -- "You have me as _Camaro Boy_ on your cell phone?" he demanded, dropping his hands and the phone to his lap to give Mikaela a horrified look.

She glanced over from her seat on his calves, the two of them stuffed into the meager love seat that the Autobots had gotten from _somewhere_. Possibly Mikaela's house. "Don't sound so scandalized Sam," she advised, glancing down at her phone before returning her attention to the printouts in her hand. "Besides, ninety percent of the school who didn't know you existed call you 'Camaro Boy' these days."

Sam did not know that, but more importantly -- "You have Miles' name!" he protested loudly, scrolling down her contacts. "You even spelled his last name right!" He looked at the next name in line and reacted rather violently, jerking his legs out from under her and falling out of the seat. "_You have Trent on your phone!_"

Mikaela scowled at him venomously, adjusting herself in the chair before she stuffed the printouts into the cushion. Thrusting her hand out, she said, "if you're going to have an _aneurysm_, give me my phone back."

He did, if only because he thought that his overreaction was being taken a little too seriously. "But that's -- that's a whole new phone! How did that -- how'd it get _on_ there?"

She stuffed the phone into her back pocket, giving him a scornful look that was unfortunately also very sexy. How did Mikaela _do_ that? "I _put_ it there, duh. Besides, now that you're my psychotic guy friend, Trent's actually really polite." Mikaela gave him a brief once over, then deemed him useful and forgave him with a small smile. "I think you knocked some sense into him."

And even though he was relieved she had forgiven him ... "_ugh._ I didn't bash him in the face so you could date him again!"

Fluttering her eyelashes at him sarcastically, she said, "still love you, Sam."

Figuring that there would be no sitting in the same seat as her after his reaction, he flopped down on the floor at the foot of the chair, leaning back against it and bracing his arms on his knees. "I think your idea of love is twisted," he informed her, turning his head slightly. "Very twisted."

"Lock your doors at night, Sam," she said, papers rustling as she retrieved them from the cushion, "and sleep with one eye open."

" ... _twisted_."

-+-

He was spending a lot of time at the Autobot base with Mikaela. Usually he ended up having to bring a lot of food -- sort of like a picnic so that when she could take a break from her lessons with Ratchet, they could eat. Then again, Sam was pretty much constantly eating anyway. Judy had leapt upon his strange compliance in taking multi-vitamins to extend his supplements to all sorts of things. Swallowing pills wasn't his favorite thing to do (he used to gag on them as a child), but it kept Mom off his back, and visiting Mikaela kept Dad from objecting to his visits, so he did it anyway.

In either case, summer was wasting away. Miles was working a summer job in an attempt to do as Sam suggested (get himself a car), and all Sam had done was hang around with Mikaela and sit in on her Autobot Anatomy classes with Ratchet. This was mostly because Bumblebee was off doing whatever -- probably hanging out with Arcee.

He seemed to be doing that a lot these days.

Coasting as smoothly as he could on the cement, Sam gently rocked on his skateboard to keep it going. Failing, he dropped a foot off to shove for more momentum and zipped around a corner. There wasn't much to do around an abandoned military base, after all.

Ahead of him, the human sized door that lead to the hanger in which Ratchet had commandeered popped open and Mikaela emerged, looking thoughtful and tired as usual. "Hey, Micka!" he called, quickly gaining the motivation to actively power his board. She smiled at him vaguely as he caught up, and they headed toward the door.

"So, have you found the Aztec Gold?" Mikaela asked.

" ... what?" he said, bewildered.

"The lost treasure in Pirates of the Caribbean."

"Oh -- _oh_. What? No," he said, still somewhat bemused. "And I'd be like a ... zombie. Skeleton. Animated Skeleton. But only in moonlight. You know, then your life would be _really_ interesting -- giant alien robots and cursed pirate treasure and -- wereskeletons."

" ... wereskeletons?"

"Yeah, like ... moonlight ... okay, clearly I should have shut up some time ago."

"Possibly." She swung up onto the railing and looked at him seriously. "Where's Bumblebee, by the way?"

"Ah --" he said, feeling supremely awkward for some reason. "Probably ... playing tag with Arcee or something."

Mikaela arched her eyebrow. "Playing tag?"

He shrugged. It made sense when Bumblebee explained it. "Giant robot thing."

"Poor Sam," she said sympathetically. "Your guy friend left you for a cute girl."

"Well, its probably best he doesn't get too attached," he said uncomfortably. "I mean, we talked about it, and a human's life span is like ... mayfly short for them. It's like ... Frosty the Snowman, only without the possibility of just making a new body next time it snows."

"Mmm." Mikaela popped open the can of soda with a snap, and nodded thoughtfully before taking a drink. "So, let me get this straight: you're letting him waste your life time on someone who is going to live at least as long as he is."

He stared at her.

"Well, really," she said, looking at him with a skeptical look. "You two guys are friends, right? If you have limited time, then shouldn't you use that time being friends?"

"No -- no, no, no," Sam said, folding his arms and leaning over. "You don't understand -- there's a _girl_ involved. I know what that's like, so ... yeah, I think building a _lasting_ relationship would be better." But it was a little like a dam had opened, because he didn't feel like he was getting his point across. He didn't think he could -- there probably weren't words, and if there were, he wouldn't be able to find them. "I could die at any time. We're not even worrying about old age right now. I might be a Decepticon target, but I'm -- just a guy. I could be hit by a car or knifed ... any number of things that Bumblebee's been stressed out about. I might die _tomorrow_ -- and while it's okay to say live the life you have ... that doesn't just effect me. I would _love_ to be best friends with Bee, instead of just a ward he's on friendly terms with, but if I do, then it's going to make it even worse when I die. I won't have to live with the consequences, but he will. And I can't do that. I wasn't _thinking_ in the long term when I set out to befriend the -- the giant alien robot that pretends to be my ride."

"Sam," she said incredulously, "you're not dying of cancer, or anything like that -- so, like, stop acting as if you were. Besides, do you even get how long ago they lost the All Spark? Ratchet's given me history lessons, too -- _Bumblebee is hundreds of centuries old_. I think he can take responsibility and suffer the consequences of his decisions."

It sounded good -- it sounded _logical_. The reasoning definitely appealed. He leaned against the railing and looked out (away from the base). The more he learned about Cybertronian culture, he more he had considered his friendship with Bumblebee at the very _least_ tragic. He knew that they had been at war and probably lost hundreds of bots on both sides, but Bumblebee had never had to watch anyone grow old and die before.

Mikaela's small (but strong, always strong) hand landed on his shoulder, and it radiated encouragement in the heat that he could feel through his sleeve. "_Think_ about it, Sam. And I swear to God, you keep using me as a Bumblebee substitute, and I'll kick your ass."

"What!" he yelped, looking at her incredulously.

She gave him a condescending look. "I'm serious, Sam. I thought it was cute when you had a crush on me, but I'm getting real tired of the kicked puppy look you get every time your Camaro goes off to hang out with the Miata." She patted his back in a weird 'go get 'em, tiger' way and walked away, rather like she had when Bumblebee 'broke down' at that scenic overlook.

He stuttered and sputtered ineffectually at her back, then finally shut up. Stepping on the end of his skateboard, he bent over and picked it up, tucking it against his hip. With an idle thumb, he rolled the dirty plastic wheels, face set in deep thought. First, he had blindly thrown himself into the project of becoming friends with a giant alien robot -- and succeeded. He'd been pleased and excited for a while. Then he suddenly realized that the average human life span was under eighty years ... and he was seventeen. He had sixty three years before he croaked. Probably, ten of those would be spent in a nursing home -- if things went well. Which, considering his life since he had gotten old enough to drive a car? Not going to happen.

And he hadn't thought there was anything wrong with being friends with what amounted to a robot. As a matter of fact, there had been something defiant and righteous in befriending Bumblebee -- until he realized that he was going to die. He knew that they had emotions, and that he was going to die on Bumblebee like a -- a pet rat or goldfish or something.

He cut the thought off ruthlessly. Those were the sort of unpleasant thoughts he had when he tried to imagine how it was from the other side of their friendship. They had gotten a lot more persistent recently, since Arcee's arrival -- the reminder that it wasn't just his Bumblebee and Bumblebee's group ... that there was a whole _race_ out there ...

Perhaps Bumblebee had forgotten somewhere that Sam didn't have as much time as he did.

-+-

"Goddamn it, Bee, I knew you were playing tag, but this is ridiculous," he said, trying to ignore the sulky sound of his own voice.

The Camaro sparkled innocently, engine purring in as a friendly manner as possible. Sam was accustomed to Bumblebee coming to pick him up from the base with fresh bug guts on him and dusty, but _this_ was ridiculous. Arcee and Bumblebee must have found a forest or ... something to go run around in. There certainly were enough leaves stuck in odd places, and not all of them were green. His wheels were caked with crud and his bumper was muddy.

Well, it would be a good excuse, wouldn't it? His parents would understand him having to wash Bee if he was in this shape. Maybe Sam could think of something to say during that time.

With a small fit of temper, he kicked the tire gently before he climbed in. Bumblebee began to play Brittany Spears in retaliation, and by the time they got home, Sam had that 'Toxic' song stuck in his head ... along from a bruise near his hairline from bashing his head on the steering wheel so many times, trying to block it out.

Naturally, by the time he reappeared with the hose, buckets of hot soapy water, sponges and scrubby brush, he had downloaded a few choice songs from the Internet, ripped them through a few freeware programs, and thus had them burned to CD and ready to play in his radio. He turned it up _really_ loud so that the high pitched voices could _really_ grate on Bumblebee's nerves, bringing the radio as close as he dared to the car. That _really_ annoying 'Carameldasen' song started to play. Sam smirked in a self satisfied way as he turned the hose on Bumblebee, noting how the car was cringing.

"I also ripped a few Dance Revolution songs," he said conversationally as he began to soak the Autobot. "Did you know they had one named after you?"

Bee visibly shrank down on his wheels.

"If you're very good," he added, pretty sure he shouldn't be enjoying that as much as he was, "I might go get Dad's ACDC."

Sam was very certain that particular part of the car alarm was an 'up yours', but decided to be nice and ignore it. A lot of the muck had fallen off Bumblebee during the trip from the base back home, but there was still enough that Sam was considering trying to get ahold of his mother's gardening attachment and finding out if it had a 'power' adjustment. As it was, he stuck his thumb into the end of the hose to force it as best as he could.

He got tired of the music he was inflicting on Bumblebee before he even got to the soap. The radio ended up on a classic rock station, turned down so that it wasn't too intrusive, and he got to work scrubbing off all of the muck that had accumulated. Which ... was a lot.

"Bee, you scratched your paint up," he remarked, lightly running a finger over the mark, and then his thumb as if he were trying to smooth it over like clay. "Did you run over a fence or something?" It was out before he thought about it, because no sooner had he said it than he remembered that few things on earth could really damage Bee, which left things _not_ of Earth, which left _Arcee_, which --

Some discomforted sensation caused the slightest hiccup in the stroke of his thumb, and he swiftly discarded the thought. With a huff, he moved on, and eventually settled down to scrub the dried bugs off the front of the Camaro. Bumblebee was doing that weird vibrating thing again, as if he were a cat. Perhaps it was a lot like that, if Sam had some weird electric field thing he was projecting. Getting washed must be something like getting a massage.

He was massaging his car. _What the hell_. That was just ... weird. Well, his _life_ was weird, his dreams were fucked, so he might as well massage his car. (The _not-thought_ of before nagged at him at the same time that he had that thought; silver and blue and yellow twisting before his sightless eyes, and the weak tremor of some ugly emotion deep in his throat made him clear it as he made his eyes see what was real.)

By the time he was done, his clothing was wet but the Camaro was bright and gleaming and just as spotless as it had been the first time Bumblebee had shown it off. A slow smile crossed his face, and he ran his hand over the racing stripes. "Good as new," he joked.

The door popped discretely. Sam looked at it for a moment; the sun was fading as it was, and he'd put a lot of effort into washing Bumblebee, not to mention that his clothing was wet with water and sweat. He shot the car a doubtful look, and in return he felt the engine turn on -- still not loud enough to hear, but a definite change in the vibration.

Just audible, a song drifted through the slightly open door; "_Life is a highway, I want a ride it all night long_."

"Yeah, well," Sam said, placing both hands on the hood and leaning on it slightly. That ugly tremor crawled back to his throat and made him say, "you ride that highway ... wherever you're going."

The door opened just a little wider. "_Crusin' and playin' the radio, with no particular place to go_."

He straightened, rubbing his damp cheek on his shoulder and throwing a glance over his shoulder back at the house. Indecision made his limbs weak, and he swallowed down the first answer he wanted to spit, because it was stupid and baseless and reasonless and _worthless_. He wanted to say no with the same desperation of an alcoholic faced with drink, and more than anything, he wanted to say yes.

"_I won't stand down, no I won't _--"

"Alright!" he hissed, slipping around the front of the car and pulling the door open. "Alright, fine!" He slid into the seat with a sulky scowl, but Bumblebee just rumbled in a smug way and snapped the door shut behind him. Sam moodily kicked under the pedals, which turned out to be a bad idea since the radio clicked (some weird pattern that Sam wasn't familiar with) and then began to play the most annoying song that Sam hadn't known existed until this point. The worst part was that there might have been three words total in the lyrics, and it was prone to repetition and therefore catchy.

"You better watch it," he said threateningly at the dashboard, "you might convince me to never wash you again."

The radio went dead, then tentatively began playing a very politely neutral driving song.

He smirked a little. Even if Bumblebee were only humoring him, it made that tight ugly thing release it's hold a little. Relaxing back against the seat as they pulled out of the driveway, he shut his eyes and let out his breath. It was easy in the darkness behind his eyes to pretend that the first warning tremors of Chernobyl-Sam had been left in the driveway, with his baseless accusations and that strange drive to attack. And maybe he was just lying to himself, because when he opened his mouth so say some nonsequenture, instead what he said was, "Mom told me she talked to you."

The volume of the song dropped and Bee started to scan the radio, which wasn't a 'no'.

"She thinks your name is Yellowbee," he added with a grin, which widened when the radio went dead. "No joke, that's what she called you." He got the distinct impression that Bumblebee was trying to figure out how to respond to that.

" ... it could have been worse," Bee finally said. "It could have been Fumblebug."

"Fumblebug?" Sam sputtered, eyes opening in surprise which he then turned on the dash.

"Humans," he said with a sort of injured dignity, "seem to have a hard time hearing when they're frightened."

He chuckled lightly. Perhaps he should have been scared when meeting all the Autobots -- okay, so he was -- but he remembered all of their names. He had been alarmed, but it had also been the most awesome thing he had ever had happened to him, so he had sort of been absorbing it all like a sponge. "Yeah, well, she also thinks that Optimus Prime is a silver disc that looks on the bright side."

A laugh track came on over the radio. Apparently, Bumblebee was in a really good mood.

There came a terrible trembling snap of that terrible bite that wanted to imply _why_, and Sam _did not think about it_. "What did you guys talk about?"

After a moment -- it didn't seem as if Bumblebee was deciding what to say, but rather _how_ to say it -- he answered, "at first we discussed what my duties as a guardian entailed. Then I showed her what I knew of those days. I did edit out some of the things that weren't that important ... eventually she inquired about getting in touch with who knew more about Mission City, so I collected accounts from Ratchet and Ironhide. Optimus Prime wished to speak to her face-to-face, however, especially in case she was having doubts about our ability to take care of you since you legally are our ward."

"When did _that_ happen?" Sam asked with a frown.

"The last week you had to go to school," Bumblebee informed him.

Heaving a sigh, he leaned his head back and rubbed his eyes with the heel of his hands. "I should have been there to interpret -- _both times_," he added, shooting Bee a dirty look. "You made my mom cry, Bee."

He actually seemed somewhat embarrassed. Though Sam knew that Cybertronians didn't _understand_ 'parents', they knew they held a _very_ special place as guardians and mentors. "I apologize. I might have been trying to assure her that you were capable of holding your own."

"_Oh my God_, what did you tell her?!"

It was actually more like 'show'. Sam hadn't been hallucinating when he thought he saw someone inside the cab of the police car, because Cybertronians were capable of creating holograms ... and in miniature, as well. As it turned out, Bumblebee had actually bore witness to Sam's interrogation by the Demon Cop from Hell, which was thoroughly embarrassing. Sam wasn't exactly _proud_ of what happened, though he did grudgingly admit that there hadn't been any real way or reason he could have reacted differently. Apparently, Bee's point was more along the line of the fact that Sam had managed to haul Mikaela off her vespa and help her escape the Decepticon.

There was a brief glimpse of himself edging up the slope, reasoning to Mikaela that the others had been talking about his EBay page. There was also Mikaela and his introduction to the Autobots, with little gaps in sound or video -- Bumblebee had apparently felt the need to censor some of Jazz's language, apparently knowing that mothers didn't approve. Optimus' account of their history was fast-forwarded, but it seemed that he had shared it with Mom. The explanation of the 'earthquake' and how Mikaela had ended up in his room came with that -- and it was kind of amusing to watch the tiny version of himself chewing out Optimus Prime for getting on the lawn. It was also a little depressing, since he only came up to Optimus' ankles.

To Sam's relief, there was nothing about Sector Seven. He wasn't sure if it was because Bumblebee simply hadn't been recording at the time (understandable), or if he just didn't want to share (also understandable). There was a the short blip -- _"I'm not going to leave you!"_ -- and Will telling him that he had to take the Cube to the building. Then came the frantic chase, up until they met the Decepticon that disabled both Ratchet and Ironhide. The perspective was obviously different that it didn't need explaining.

"The rest," Bumblebee said, "was between Optimus Prime and Judith Witwicky."

"No wonder Mom cried on me," he said dryly. "That was worse that signing up with the military and getting shipped overseas. By the way, nice job splicing Ratchet and Ironhide's points of view in a way that got rid of most of the freaky stuff. I don't remember much, but even I know it didn't go _that_ smoothly."

"I thought it would be good not to worry her needlessly," Bee admitted. "It was already over, and it would only upset her."

Yeah, but Cybertronians don't understand parents, and humans could be amazingly intuitive. His mother knew some of what happened to him, and she probably had nightmares that were much worse than reality. After all, _he_ was.

-+-

_It was night and he was walking with the Autobot on his heels and the All Spark in hand -- and then his next step lead him stumbling forward, hands thrust out to catch him. When he regained his balance, he continued on his way ... but not toward that ever waiting end-of-the-street. He eventually made it to the sidewalk, and continued walking. Just as he was loosing interest, he heard the familiar whirl-click of Autobot gears. Perking up a little, he quickly headed off in pursuit -- but carefully. If the bot knew he was coming, then he'd never get to see him. _

_He scrambled through a yard, fighting his way over plants and fences, chasing that illusive whirl-click of Cybertronian gears. The night hid whoever he was chasing, and it was somehow urgent to find them. The next yard he stumbled into was his own, and he was so tired. After drinking some water in the kitchen he went up to his bed, intending to rest before he went looking for the Cybertronian again. _

_The computer sat innocently, but the wires had multiplied, and when he looked, the walls had cables riddled through them, thick as his thumb or hair-fine small. Moving to the bed, he reached out and grabbed the covers, metallic fingers clinking quietly against each other and the tiny gears purring with each movement, and flung them back, ready to climb into bed. It was full of cable and wires, and he climbed in on top of them, pulling his sheets up and rolling over. Electricity buzzed unseen but sensed all around him, a continuous presence that was comforting instead of irritating. _

_They wrapped him in a gently undulating mass of comfort, and he felt them through his metal arm just as much as against his skin, the charge like quiet music in his ears. The fine hairs on the back of his neck and his arms stood on end, as if static electricity was building in his body. He twitched and shifted uncomfortably, feeling the sheet cling to him, and then the cables curled over him and separated him from the irritant. The humming in his ears was so much like the sound of that electrical plant that Bumblebee had taken them to in order to fight the Decepticon. _

_But as comfortable as he was, he was becoming strangely restless. He couldn't lay still and the static building in his body along with the power humming through the cords was enough to drive him to distraction. Knots of hair-fine wires prodded at him, smoothing his tensed muscles like the soothing hands trying to calm him and coils of cables filled with pure energy twining around him like an affection starved cat. It only made him shift more, until he was practically writhing -- struggling, but not to escape. He was trying to get comfortable in his own skin, but it seemed like an impossible task, his left arm crackling with power. Blue and sparking, arcs of frustration that connected to the wires around him. _

_He didn't see it happen, but he swiftly became aware of the shape the cords and wires were taking, slight and humanoid, swiftly gaining detail. He froze, frightened and enraptured as fine wires twisted together until the thing even had a _face_ and expression. Horrified, he struggled much more violently against the cables now _restraining_ him, not cradling him. Crackling blue energy shot from his arm into the cables wrapped around his chest more firmly than Cybertronian fingers, and then the wire-beast crouched on the end of his coiled nest suddenly fused and became a gray being. _

_Stilling in amazement, he took in the clearly inorganic form of the humanoid (it had no characteristics that labeled it male or female, not even in the loosest of Cybertronian models), at once still obviously made of wires but at the same time no longer looking like a skinned human with muscles made of metal fibers. A gleaming silver netting covered it like the most intricate of tattoos, and it's finely structured androgynous features twitched slightly before it opened it's eyes. Black eyes, with the glowing blue rings of Autobot optics. _

_Somewhat mutually fascinated, they stare at one another. Kitten-puppy curious, the wire-person was the first to move, reaching forward with that thicker-than-water, lighter-than-air way -- reaching forward to wrap long thin fingers around his gears-and-plates left arm, fixing blue optics as if it's as fascinated by the comparatively skeletal structure as he is with the fine silver netting stretching over it. Something flickered in it's optics, or maybe the optics themselves flicker, and there was the familiar _whirl-click_ of shifting metal. _

_And he remembers his old nightmare, where he's trapped inside one, and he knew how it was going to play out. He knew which part was going to detach and become armor and what was becoming a gear and where it needed to shift. The information slid though his mind like scrolling computer code. When the wire-person stopped shifting, it simply looked at him, and he realized what he was looking at was a protoform. _

_The hard metal fingers tightened around his metallic wrist, and it was very curious -- very interested in him. It was a protoform, Cybertronian, _Autobot_, but it was the same size he was, so when it reach out with softly whirling gears and curled round steel fingers around the back of his neck, he didn't even flinch. The coils of energy-heavy cables wound around him and the sleek armored shape of the Autobot hovered over him, curious -- _fascinated_. _

_His hand trembled as it found itself on the warm metal plate that would form the colored exoskeleton of an alt form, and his stomach lurched hotly. _

He knew there was something wrong with him. Standing under the painfully hot spray of the shower, Sam wondered just _what_ was wrong with him.

* * *

- I'm sure plenty of you are having convulsions of 'WTF!!' over that last dream. Lolz. So did I, and I wrote it.

- RE Cuttlefish skin: OR SO RATCHET TOLD MIKAELA. If you go with the movie and say that every 'cell' of the Transformers is actually a little machine, then you may consider that they have several layers of these little machines, and some machines are made out of the equivlent of copper, and others are made out of carbon. Then they do the hokey-pokey and turn themselves about, and that's what Cybertronian touch is all about. 8D

- Time wise, this chapter occured over roughly a week. Beginning to the cell phone txt was one day, a few days later came the talk with his mother, the next day came the lunchtime conversation about Sam being 'Camaro Boy' on Mikaela's cell phone, and the rest of it happened a few days later.

- Oh, and Sam's dream with Mikaela and Nurse!Ratchet was perfectly innocent. It was just one of those nonsense things your brain spits at you when you're sleeping, though it obviously had a few characteristics of his more plot-important dreams. That's what happens when you have dreams about the same thing over and over again.


	8. Tempest

**Chapter Eight: Tempest** - Or the Chapter in which Giant Robots say "ONOES!"

Bumblebee did manage to escape without injury, but not without playing the part of the car alarm that Sam was sure _still_ meant 'up yours'.

--

_After nights and nights and nights, he was getting somewhere. The end of the road was closer than ever, and Sam breathed deeply, hands trembling on the All Spark. It was dark, and there seemed to be fewer lights, but the moon still shown above and the pavement still glistened wetly like a thousand shattered stars. The houses slept, the vehicles remained unmoved, but when he listened closely -- _

_The reassuring whirl-click of gears was not alone. He had the sense that there was the small Cybertronian behind him, matching him move for move as always, and just on the edge of his awareness, another. This did not disturb him, as he was more focused on the nearing end of the street. He had two ways to go when he got there, and he didn't know which one to chose. Not yet, he knew, he still had a ways to go ... but which road would he take when he got there? It was growing nearer, and he still didn't know. _

_"What now?" he demanded, clutching the small cube close to his chest. _

_Small steel hands gently pushed him onward. "Don't stop walking," the Autobot encouraged. _

_**Progress is procession. It is in motion. Persisting is the only option.**_

_"Things haven't been in movement for a long time," he accused. _

_"That will change." -- said intently, like a _promise_. _

_**Change is ... in motion.**_

_"You've never done this before," he said slyly. _

_"It is ... new," the Autobot agreed. _

_**A suitable template has been located. **_

_"Are you sure?"_

_"Don't worry, it's working."_

_**The Prototype is secure. Copies will be made. Procedures are applied.**_

_Then he stumbled, the All Spark was gone, and he was off searching for that elusive Cybertronian who mustn't see him again._

-+-

There was something that was bothering Sam. It bothered him deeply, a bad taste on his tongue. Nothing could get rid of it, it seemed. A sharp unpleasant bite of _wrongness_, and an aftertaste of unpalatable falseness. Miles and Mikaela were the first that he spoke of this to, when he said: "Does it ever disturb you that fast food is normally so saturated with chemicals that it couldn't decay if it wanted to?" While the other two blinked at him, he frowned at his chicken sandwich thoughtfully, then took another bite.

Getting Mikaela away from Ratchet wasn't nearly as hard as he had thought it was going to be. Really, all he had to do was ask her and she put her evil feminine wiles to work. Well, he thought she probably put her evil feminine wiles to work; it was possible she threatened to hot wire Ratchet. If Sam was a giant alien robot, that would be a good way to get him to do something, after all. He had also intentionally chosen the day that Miles had off work. It had been a while since they had all gotten together to hang out, after all, and he rather missed them sitting at Sonic and chowing down.

Naturally, he had them all go to the Mall. It was a nice compromise between the distance that Mikaela would have to travel to move from base to the town, and the least they could do was meet her half way. After all, Bumblebee was needed back at the base for a few hours at least, so they were under Arcee's watch. Well, Arcee was too small to carry three people, being a Miata, so really it was technically only Mikaela under Arcee's watch while Miles and Sam had caught a ride with Miles' mother, who wanted to run errands anyway. Of course, Sam was always ravenous, which explained how they had ended up at the food court. The noisy, grease-smelling food court with it's re-re-refried food.

Of course, upon hearing Sam's issue, Miles bit into his sandwich with over-played gusto. "Mmm!" he said loudly. "Chemicals! Radioactively good."

"This?" Mikaela said, gesturing between the two of them. "_This_ is why I don't eat with you guys. When Sam isn't being gross and analyzing the food, _you're_ encouraging him."

"Hey, that's not fair," the blond protested with a scowling pout. "That's what guys do. Be gross and egg each other into doing stupid stuff."

"I'll have you know I do plenty of stupid stuff on my own, _without_ egging," Sam objected. Waiting a beat, he added, "hey, wait a minute ..."

"Why am I even here?"

"Because your engineering class is slowly turning you into an science zombie?"

"You're just jealous that I could work your car over and you can't."

Sam rolled his eyes, so completely unimpressed with that statement. "You're just jealous my car likes me better than you."

"God, guys," Miles cut in. "Stop arguing over the Camaro like it's the kid of your marriage gone badly."

"It's a bit more complicated than that," Mikaela said, looking at him doubtfully.

"Because it honestly sounds complicated. It's a _car_, Mika."

"Bee is _not_ just any car," Sam objected.

Miles groaned. "I get it, man. You love your car. You attack giant jocks for the sake of your car. _Everyone_ loves your car, except people who hate yellow, and then they just wear colored shades. Dogs love your car, and birds fear it. Shortly, I expect to you to ask me to be your best man. _That's how much we all get it_."

"I don't think you really do get it," Sam said mildly, calmly sucking down a smoothie he didn't think he'd normally ever touch but had a strange craving for, "but that's okay. We're all mad here."

"So," Mikaela said, "speaking of fast cars, I might be able to get my hands on an oh-two Mazda. I've been doing some work on it recently, and I've been offered a nice deal."

Sam made a questioning noise, a little baffled and wondering if she meant what he thought she meant. "The -- 'owner' is offering?"

She gave him a meaningful look. "Yup. She got in contact with the friends who are looking after it while she's out of the country, said that if things work out with me and I want, I can be the shiny new driver of a blue Miata."

"That's -- awesome," he said, and really meant it. Sort of. It also meant that Arcee would be in town a lot more often. Which in turn meant that Bumblebee would be gone more often. And while he was thrilled that Mikaela was getting a guardian, even for just a short while, he was still somewhat jealous since her life seemed to include them a lot more than his own, and he could never be completely pleased with something that ... well, he was just so used to thinking about it being Bumblebee and him. Bumblebee was the only one who'd been there fore the entirety of the escapade -- the meeting, battle, and _aftermath_. Sam hadn't felt the need to inflict his stupid nightmares on Mikaela -- hadn't been intending to reveal them to Bumblebee, either, but after the episode of the Transforming-squish ... well, he didn't explain them like he did _that_ one, but it was still nice to have someone around that could guess what the nightmares were about. It was ... just all around nice to have someone to _talk_ to like that.

But now Mikaela, who Sam really, really liked hanging out with was going to partner up with Arcee, and Bumblebee and Arcee -- that day she arrived, the way they'd been parked in the road. Nose-to-nose -- chest-to-chest? And everything would change. Bumblebee was fairly tolerant about the nightmares Sam had and -- and Sam _liked_ Bumblebee, liked having him around -- and he liked it when they were 'Sam and Bee', not ... 'Sam and when he had to be there, Bee'. He didn't want -- even that stupid stunt, just because he wanted to know about what S7 had done to Sam ...

Miles could make him forget the restless hiding horror deep in his chest (the fear and self-disgust he didn't know why he had), Mikaela could sooth it away and was simply so _understanding_ that it was hard to be dejected about sharing a species with her. But it was -- different, it was _better_ with Bumblebee. It seemed that only Bumblebee could say something that kept Chernobyl from burning, or change that super-nova heat into the pleasant radiance of the sun on Earth's surface. But if Arcee was going to be there, then the logic followed that _Bumblebee wouldn't_.

That wasn't the agreement. Sam would do _so much_ for the warm feeling, but he had never agreed to have _Chernobyl_ and _nothing_. He didn't agree to that. Chernobyl was -- was apathy and anger and an inexplicable terror of his own body, and he _didn't want that_ -- any spot of brightness (_any spot of yellow_) was something to be guarded jealously -- and it could all go away. If Arcee came to stay, then Bumblebee would be _gone_, and --

... and there was Sam, with his perfect life, never having had to sacrifice anything. Looking at Mikaela, he understood that. She was saying, "yeah," in a pleased tone, and "it seems like the owner's friend got hurt, so the deals going through the guys having me look into it. I've been seriously considering saying yes since I've moved out."

It was like she was asking permission, saying that she hadn't agreed yet. "I think it's a good idea," he said, as sincerely as he could, which wasn't much ... but at least it sounded honest enough. "If they're willing to part with it, or even just let you borrow it, it'd be good." For her. For Bee, if Arcee was anything approaching what Sam suspected she was to him. And Bumblebee had never asked to be his therapist or his chauffeur, and it was high time that Sam learned to look after himself. Learned to deal with it all -- with _Chernobyl_, by himself.

"Yeah," she said with a pleased smile, and it was almost worth it.

"Man," Miles groaned pitifully. "My best bud has a freakin' _Camaro_, and you're getting a _Miata_ -- yeah, okay, it's a girly Barbie car, but it's a lot better than a junker! This is going to suck!"

Mikaela and Sam exchanged looks. They had an advantage over poor Miles, being ... well, friends with giant alien robots that required protection or at least entertainment. That is, the _humans_ required protection and the _Autobots_ required entertainment. It worked out fairly well, so long as no one transformed on anyone's lawn, or pushed girls through their windows.

Once they finished with lunch, they investigated the novelty shops, and then Sam's day went to hell when they left to go home. Actually, it sort of went to hell the moment they stepped into the parking lot and Sam realized that Bumblebee had returned. Mostly because he grinned automatically at the way the clean lines were practically lit white under the sun from having such a highly glossy paint. It looked like Bumblebee was covered with a thick liquid coating like those pictures of concept cars (that he'd never looked at before he had one of his own), and he thought with fierce sincerity: 'that is one sexy car'.

Then he choked on air. This naturally lead to some violent coughing. _Then_ he couldn't even breathe period, even with the wrenching in his throat, simply because he remembered the dreams he'd been having (_cables and blue optics and the purring whirl of gears shifting_).

Later, according to Miles, his face had been priceless. That caused a bit of awkwardness, because he couldn't share _what_ had made him make the face. Miles wouldn't understand why realizing what an _attractive_ car the Camaro was would make him look like he'd swallowed his tongue, and Mikaela ... might understand a little _too_ well. Then she'd get all freaked out and Sam was freaking out well enough on his own, thank _anyway_. He'd sooner be _shot _than admit that instead of being normal and having a normal sort of wet dream --

Well, to be perfectly honestly, he'd rather be doubting his sanity and sexuality and things than having the usual sort of nightmare. Having that mysterious miniature protoform in his bed was a lot less horrifying that the nightmares in which he couldn't control his left arm and it went looking for his spine the hard way. Or when cables burst from his skin (or mostly his chest, like Alien), or the times his skeleton got a mind of it's own and peeled him off like a banana skin and walked away while he was left unable to move on the ground.

Ah, well. Was it any wonder why he was apathetic, angry, and terrified by his own body?

After their three-way farewell and parting, Sam made a (slightly eager) beeline toward his ride. Personal sanity and sexuality aside, _damn_. Shiny. The sleazy Camaro leer wasn't really helping matters any, either. Bumblebee helpfully popped open the door when Sam reached about his bumper, and he wasted little time in reaching for it.

"Jesus," he murmured, sliding into the leather seat. Even the interior was glossy and smelled ... well, it wasn't leather. After a moment, it made sense, because Bumblebee was made of metal. Why would he have genuine leather seats? He probably didn't like the smell much, either. But the black and yellow seats were glossy and soft, and the interior smelled ... really good. The only thing he could recognize was the under scent of grease, and while all the completely alien smells _should_ alarm him, it didn't. He wrapped his hands around the wheel, and whatever they'd used to shine all the things in the interior didn't even leave a residue, and _man_ ... it was like ... it was like _sex on wheels_. Forget for a moment that this was a sentient being -- complete. Sex. On. Wheels. And it was all his! Right now, the only way it could possibly be more awesome, was if he was driving _really, really_ fast. But if he did that, he might spontaneously combust, so it was possibly for the best that he wasn't. But -- it was just -- wow. Oh, wow. Sam would _never_ forget this smell as long as he lived. If he could just ... make it a cologne, he'd be a billionaire. No one should have to live without smelling it at least once in their lives.

After a moment, he wound down and got control of himself, remembering that this really _hot_ car was actually an alien who spent most of his time protecting Sam and contemplating humanity and really freaking him out. "What _happened_ to you? I mean, not that I'm _complaining_ --"

"Obviously not," Bee rumbled, sounding partially amused and a little baffled. "Ratchet took the opportunity to demand some repairs and a physical, as I've been separated from a medic for several years. An extensive cleaning was part of that."

"Well, whatever he used or however he did it ... damn," Sam said, and stopped himself there so he wouldn't gibber incoherently about hot cars and really freak out Bee. "So, anything worrisome?"

He turned on the radio and engine. After a moment, he admitted, "No, but ..."

"But? Is there something wrong?"

"There's nothing wrong with my systems." Sam shot an incredulous look at the dashboard, and Bumblebee reluctantly admitted: "But that's the thing -- there isn't anything wrong with any part of me. Any Cybertronian over a few century of age always has _some_ quirk in their gears. I'm running like a newly made protoform."

"I ... I don't get it," Sam said slowly. "Is that bad?"

"Not bad," Bee swiftly assured him. "Just ... inexplicable. A mech of my age shouldn't be running this well. It hasn't happened since Cybertron ..."

"I thought you were young for a mech?"

The engine rumbled too lowly for Sam to hear, but he felt it. "Comparatively. I'm still far past the stage of running cleanly."

"Weird," Sam commented. Cybertronian age and growth were one of those things he had to just grin and nod on. Bumblebee had tried to explain once that _technically_, Cybertronians don't grow, but then it came with a bunch of qualifiers that just hurt his head. It was part of the reason Ironhide was so bemused by young children. "So ... then nothing is wrong? I mean, all this sudden healthy running isn't going to crash and burn?"

"Unlike organics, we don't 'get better' just before dying," Bumblebee reassured him. "My body is in top shape, but it hasn't affected my processors, so there is little to worry about."

"Except for _why_, am I right?"

"Yes."

Sam relaxed at that. His mother liked to watch that House show, so Sam was a little paranoid about things seeming to be better ... or changing at all, really. It seemed like the patients on that show always just suddenly crashed and spent the entire episode appearing better only to get even worse. It was enough to get anyone freaked out. Peering out the window, he noticed that they were headed back to the same place they'd met Arcee. His chest tightened slightly, and he quickly coughed into his fist.

"Mikaela's told me that Arcee was thinking about running guardian duty for a little bit."

"She's bored," Bumblebee explained. "She enjoys fighting." He hesitated. "A lot of us do."

He wasn't sure what to do with _that_ information. Sam wasn't much of a fighter -- he was witty and ran away. That was pretty much his job. Occasionally, he got a little too much fire and decided to delete giant evil alien robots from the Matrix like a bad virus, but that was only when he fell too far deep down the rabbit hole, thanks anyway. "Well," he said, feeling he had to make _some_ sort of response, "I'll just have to keep that in mind, so that if any crazy fights in the city break out, I know to run like hell."

"You _won't_ be in the middle of one of those fights again," Bee said seriously, like a promise.

"Yeah, well, you can't say that," Sam said, knowing it like he knew who his mother was. "For one -- a lot of crazy stuff happens." And for another, Bumblebee would be in it, and Sam couldn't shake the memory of the mech crawling.

"And for another?"

"A lot of crazy stuff happens," he repeated guilelessly. "So, you guys have been in contact with Elita-One?"

There was only enough of a pause to be noticeable. "Yes," Bee confirmed. "She is on Earth's moon with Chromia, who has been injured too badly to make it through Earth's atmosphere without injury. With the Decepticons still loose, Elita-One won't leave Chromia behind, but there is no way to safely get Ratchet there to repair her."

"Isn't there some way we can help? The US, I mean," Sam said.

"Possibly. However, Ratchet and Chromia both confirm that the injuries are minor and will heal given time. It would be more conservative to wait."

"Yeah, but what if the 'Con's find them first?"

"Chromia's injury is a simple dent that won't stop her from fighting. It would hurt to enter the atmosphere, but it would only damage her a little."

Sort of like the ice hurt Bumblebee, though it did no real appreciable damage to his body. "What about any other stragglers?"

"Elita-One is never found far from Optimus Prime," Bumblebee said, "though they rarely speak. The others are much more wide spread, trying to round up the Decepticons. Starscream might have sent out a similar message, though, so ... Earth might get rather busy pretty soon." There was a pensive tense silence. "Perhaps it would be better if we left."

"No!" Sam yelped, then flushed. "That is -- I mean, the Decepticons already know about Earth, right? Even if you left, who's to say that will mean we're safe?"

"While a valid point," Bumblebee said slowly, "You're rationalizing your own desires."

Sam grimaced at the accurate observation, and was further uncertain what to make of the neutral tone. He could almost hear some noise, feel it prickling his skin -- Bumblebee had forgotten to use human inflection. He did it so rarely that it was always a surprise when he switched back to Cybertronian inflection. "Well, sorry," he grumbled. When in doubt, act defensively. "I just -- I mean, my life's been turned upside down by everything that's happened ... but if I had to do it again, knowing what I know, I'd still want the Camaro with the custom faded paint job."

That sparked a vibration through the car frame that Sam recognized as amusement. Humor literally shook a Cybertronian's frame. "You didn't really have much of a choice by that point, Sam," Bumblebee said.

"Yeah -- well, if time travel were ever an option, I wouldn't stop old Captain Archibald from finding Megatron," he joked.

Bumblebee was quiet a moment. "That would have been a bad idea," he finally said.

It took Sam a moment to realize that Bumblebee meant that things could have probably worked out a lot worse, that he'd probably had _nightmares_ about it. "So ... as badly as things went," he said, "it was still for the best, huh?"

"From the point of Megatron crash landing on Earth, yes. But really, there isn't any use in thinking backward like that."

Sam didn't _really_ get it, and knew he couldn't ... but he had thought, sometimes, that maybe if he had gotten up the nerve to talk to Mikaela in junior high, or if he had taken the time that day she looked _really_ down to ask her how she was, or -- so, he sorta understood, even if he didn't get it on the scale he has the suspicion Bumblebee was speaking on. The uselessness of backward thinking, that is. The 'what if's and 'could have been's.

They eventually arrived at the wide grassy stretch, and Sam got out to let Bumblebee transform -- which he did, strangely with the protective mask down that Sam had only seen once.

"Whoa," he said, holding up his hands flippantly, "what's up with the face guard?"

Bumblebee shifted on his feet. This in itself wasn't unusual. Bumblebee was a rather active mech, after all, nearly always in the middle of some sort of movement. The chirp that almost sounded _embarrassed_, and how he lifted one hand to the back of his hand? Now, that was unusual. It took less than half a second for Bumblebee to regain his moxie, so to speak, and he took a more casual pose as both halves of the mask slid back up.

"Oh," Sam said intelligently. Apparently, Bumblebee had changed his mind about upgrades and his need for them, because instead of the familiar dark metal that formed a skeletal frame and brought to mind insects, he bore intricate dull gray plates that created a very human face. Unlike Optimus Prime's it was less of a generalized mockery and even ... well. "Wow," he added, uncertain what to make of it. "That's some upgrade. Is that -- like, mask version four point oh? Because -- I mean, it looks really good."

He only now recognized the apprehensive expression because it relaxed into a more neutral look. "I'll tell Ratchet you approve," he said wryly, and _wow_, but Ratchet must have made improvements. The mockup moved perfectly in sync with vocalizer, nearly seamless enough for it to look ... natural, though Sam knew it had been added, not grown.

"It's a huge improvement over Optimus' prototype," Sam said as Bumblebee settled down to sit. He leaned on the Autobot's folded leg and grinned. "Much more human, less monkey."

The fact that they could construct a mask of flexible metal plates that could _smile_ that way was amazing. "You'll have to talk to Ratchet about that. The prototype was made with only what images that could be hacked from the satellites and what I could sneak out while being watched. That was before much research was actually put into human psychology." A pensive look (this was _fascinating_) crossed the features, and then Bumblebee snapped back to the present. "The term he used for the mathematical construction on the new expression masks is 'Golden Ratio', which is apparently an accurate measure for human aesthetics. It made it much more simple."

"I'll take your word for it," he said with amusement. The bad thing about being friends with a centuries-or-more old robot that was connected to the Internet was that they could use all sorts of words that the average person simply didn't. "It looks good, anyway." It was new and hypnotizing, and ... well, it did change his view of Bumblebee. Not really in a good way, but not in a terribly bad way, either. It was just ... well, obviously it made the Autobot more _human_, which was stupid, because he wasn't. They had spent months talking about the differences between the species, both having their own trouble understand the other's culture and psychology. The human shaped mask would make it _very_ easy to start thinking of Bumblebee as a giant human in a metal box. "So -- uh, tell me about it," he requested. "Is it strange?"

"Not as strange as it will be for Ratchet," Bumblebee said, with another one of those smiles. "Optimus and I are the best subjects for this project -- Optimus Prime has already been stripped for it, and when I was created, there were only the barest facial structures available. Ratchet, on the other hand, has a very difficult structure, and being the medic ..." He shrugged. "It's a bit different," he added, raising his hands and touching the gray plates lightly. "But I am the most familiar with humans. Your expressions and movements come to me much more easily. It was cake to write up a program to run it ... though that was also when I realized to the full extent of just how alien our cultures are to each other ..." That seemed to depress Bumblebee, the brilliant blue light in his optics dimming and his shoulders sinking.

Sam pressed his palms against the yellow plate he was resting against. He was ... good with words when trying to mock someone, but that ... mushy stuff wasn't in his repertoire. Then again, according to Mikaela, he didn't need to be as long as he could _touch_ the bot. "Not that different," he said. "You guys feel sadness and loss -- I know that for sure. And you think things are funny, and you enjoy things like getting washed and I'm pretty sure you like music, you play it often enough. I mean, you played tricks on me, remember? That must have been fun. So -- yeah, maybe we're not completely alike, but wouldn't that just be weird anyway?"

"It would be impossible," Bumblebee acknowledged, but he didn't seem too cheered.

"Yeah, well --" Sam pushed hard on the plating out of frustration, leaning his weight into it. Bumblebee looked a little startled and fixed his attention on the relatively small human. "I don't care, okay?" he demanded. "So we're different -- I'm a short lived organic, and you're basically an immortal sentient robot alien. It's sort of _expected_, isn't it? But you're still my friend. We'll just ... have to make sure there aren't any miscommunications. Alright?"

The plates that formed Bumblebee's face shifted (liquid smooth) into what was an almost patronizingly indulgent look. "Alright."

"Starting," Sam said, arching his eyebrows high and pointing, "with that look right there. That one? Don't do that one." When Bumblebee looked taken aback, Sam explained. "_That_ one is the one your parents give you when they know you're being idiotically idealistic and childish. So ... don't."

"This may end up being harder than I thought," Bumblebee said uncertainly.

"Don't worry about it," he said, leaning forward to rest his chest against the mech's leg and crossing his arms on top of it. He lowered his head to the pillow his arms made and smirked. "It's hard for a lot of people, too, and we've been doing this throughout evolution."

The fine scratched pattern on the pale gray plates caught the sunlight, but didn't throw it back in broken blinding flashes. It was kinda ... frosted, or brushed. It was ... well, Cybertronians themselves were just so _fascinating_. All of humanity's robots and gears were so jerky and slow and ... awkward. Unnatural. A person could think that robotic organisms would be the same -- but that wasn't true at all. Somehow, they were as fluid as _water_, or oil, or oil on water for that matter. Who knew that dozens of little metal plates stuck together and overlapping could form curves into a rather organic shaped face?

"Would you like to touch it?" Bumblebee asked, almost quietly, expression unreadable.

"What?" Sam asked in surprise.

Gears whispered into motion as the sixteen foot robot shifted slightly. "I have noticed that humans are a rather tactile species ..." he said, "and you've been studying this new construct. Would you like to touch it?"

Considering that all of twenty minutes ago, Sam had been ready to squeal like a thirteen year old girl and thinking inappropriate thoughts about his so-called friend, that was -- okay, wow, that was _weird_. Very, _very_ weird. So weird his stomach was doing weird things. Weird. But _dammit_, Bumblebee was still as shiny as sin wrapped in polished pleather, and it wasn't _just_ the interior that smelled that way, though he'd been _trying_ to ignore it -- and yes. Yes, he did really want to touch it. Oh, boy, did he want to touch it ... which was exactly why he wasn't going to. "I dunno, Bee," he said doubtfully. "That looks a little dangerous."

"I can be very still," Bumblebee promised.

Well, who could argue with logic like that? Goddamn it, he had _no_ self-control ... which -- considering his brief courtship of Mikaela and his attack on Megatron, should have been obvious enough that he didn't realize it only now. "Hey!" he yelped as Bumblebee's metal fingers wrapped around him before he quite realized that he was even moving. "Hey! Watch that! Whoa!"

"You can't reach it from down there," Bumblebee said reasonably, and a person would think that being machine, the grip would be rough. It wasn't -- the hand was not quite enough to wrap around his waist totally, but it closed as firmly and gently as a roller coast ride's harness. After his first startled squirming, he stopped and relaxed, only grasping the thumb across his lap with both hands as he was lifted the short distance to Bumblebee's face. Up close, the frosted matte appearance was even more obvious, and from that point the only obvious question was: what would it _feel_ like?

A few tons of machinery was as still as a statue under his hands, even though there were a dozen subtle sounds as other things continued to run. It was slightly distracting, but Sam was able to block it out, as well as the optics carefully studying him while he puzzled out the maze of metal plates. On the broad parts on the face were the wider bands, and on the more moveable parts of the face -- the mouth, and the area around there -- were constructed of many much smaller plates. It didn't feel cold, but tepid, the scratched patterns tickling his fingertips and he pressed just slightly and for a moment it was immovable as any metal and then it gave, the whisper of rolling hydraulics tilting the plates under his hands as he moved them, creating indents seamlessly around the pressure of his fingers.

Other than that, it was all perfectly still, and he stopped pressing and it went back to the way it was, but there were still whispering things, and the shifting of optics kept catching his attention until he finally glanced up -- glanced up, and had to take in the full measure of it all -- the massive metal giant, the _living alien_ under his hands. A hollow, weak feeling yawned wide in his belly, until he felt trembly and breathless. Bumblebee blinked, like the shuttering of the camera, and his breath hitched in the name of some unknown sensation, some strange feeling.

Sam forced himself to swallow, to gain control of himself. He forced his hands to relax, though the joints ached, and he said, "it's gonna be hard to get used to this." He dared to glance up again, but the spell was broken, and he could actually meet the empty blue optics without ... without whatever that feeling had been. He took his hands off the intricate dull gray mask and wrapped his hands around the slick silver alloy of Bumblebee's thumb.

"For both of us," Bumblebee acknowledged, bringing up his other hand just to cup it around Sam's back. He leaned back into the hand automatically, without thought, trying to take in the whole difference in the Autobot's appearance.

"And everyone will be getting one?" he asked.

"I'm sure Ironhide will complain," Bee said, the sunlight hitting glowing lines in his sly smile. "Optimus Prime may have to order him into compliance ..."

Sam snickered at the image that gave him. He savored it until something Arcee said came to mind, and he frowned slightly. "And all of this is being done so we'll ... relate to you?"

Two of his fingers pressed a little into his back, sliding slightly. "You've noticed how skilled we are at shape shifting, right?"

"Well -- yeah. I mean, you put all of these little pieces of armor together and make a _car_."

Bumblebee nodded. "Transforming is a very basic code within us. It pervades every line of data in our processors. It's what we _do_, like ... breathing to us."

"Like its in your DNA," Sam said, "or -- or whatever it is you have. Deoxo -- well, anyway, I think I get it."

"It's a psychological need for us to blend in. Since we clearly can't blend in very well due to our size, it was fairly inevitable that we would attempt to change our shape. Ironhide is stubborn, of course ... and it will take time to reconfigure our hasty arrangement of armor into something more agile, but it would be possible within a few decades."

"Decades? I thought you were excellent mimics," he teased, smiling.

"Even a dedicated mimic needs time," Bumblebee said tolerantly.

It hadn't taken hardly any time at all to put together that face, though. He looked at it again, all the dozens of tiny plates that shifted one way and another like a human's face might, that somehow managed to look so _malleable_ that he could reach out and mold it with his hands -- and he had, to an extent, but it looked even softer than that brief experiment had revealed. "Arcee's gonna stay with Mikaela," he said suddenly, and he sounded hushed.

"So I'd been informed," Bumblebee said, "if Mikaela is agreeable."

The loose, hollow feeling that had been nagging Sam since he'd first set his hands to the face sudden filled with that weak _ugly_ feeling again, and he didn't like the white highlights on yellow or the glossy interior or the smell or the face that Bumblebee now sported nearly half as much as he had. He didn't like the differences between humans and Cybertronians, and he didn't like the way that Arcee had shown up, specially at his house -- and he couldn't quite say why that fact of all should make him _so_ unhappy. _His_ house. Of all --! "Well," he said suddenly, hardly knowing what he was saying except that he had to say something to stop his own thoughts, "it's a good thing, right? Now she'll be around more -- you know. For races. Giant -- giant robot tag. And stuff. And --" and scratches on Bumblebee's paint.

And his own stupidly short life that could end in the blink of an instant if he was just in the wrong place at the wrong time.

"That's true," Bumblebee acknowledged, but his voice sounded distant, and his expression was distracted.

Maybe a different day, Sam would have taken it personally, but he was searching so hard for _something_ to focus on that he welcomed the distraction. "What's wrong?" he asked.

"I am --" he broke off for a second, focusing back on Sam and looking apologetic. "I find myself in an odd position, Sam. I am attempting to resolve it."

He stared at the robot, baffled. "What -- what kind of odd position?"

"I have to work it out for myself," he said reluctantly. "There is much confusing it, and ... I'm sorry. It's getting late."

Sam inhaled sharply in surprise when he began moving, but he was only being lowered to the ground. Bumblebee's thumb withdrew from across his lap, and he slid off the Autobot's palm, landing a little unsteadily on his feet. He glanced up briefly, but swallowed it down ... If Bumblebee had something he had to work out for himself, then ... this was something that Sam had to work out.

"Guess it's time to go home, then," he said. The sun was setting, after all ...

"That may be for the best."

_Shut up, Sam_, he thought to himself as he moved back to make room for the shifting Autobot who merely rolled over, breaking into a thousand pieces that finally settled with a snap and a slight rocking on his wheels as a Camaro. The driver's door popped open and he reluctantly approached the car, sliding into the familiar interior. Familiar, glossy, nice smelling interior. _You asked for this ... decided on this. Agreed to this. Might as well start now_.

Might as well start learning to function on his own. The Autobots separated him from Miles and his parents, and this -- weird thing separated him from the Autobots and Mikaela, so ... he might as well start getting used to it. What else could he do? Might as well go home and get in bed and dream those nightmares, and keep his mouth shut about everything. _This is what Chernobyl and nothing feels like_. Somehow he hadn't figured out how to have the warm feeling, and he hadn't figured out how to keep Bee, and ... so that was it.

"Something is bothering you. What is it?" Bumblebee asked.

He wanted to say it -- say something. But he didn't know how, and he wasn't sure it was even for the best, and he'd _just been reminded_ that Bumblebee had his own problems he was having to look into and -- and that dark ugly thing in his throat made him want to say: _I'm sorry, I've got to figure it out on my own_. But even that ugly thing was weak under Sam general good nature. "Nothing, Bee. Just tired."

"You've been sleeping restlessly," he said, still not driving. "Perhaps you should consider alternative means of getting rest?"

He paused awkwardly, not even really paying attention to himself _not_ saying, 'you're endorsing _drugs_, Bumblebee?' Though the nightmares were a constant, he hadn't realized that he'd been behaving in ways that made it obvious. "Yeah, probably," he agreed. "How'd you know?"

"Even though I have altered my recharge schedule to compromise with Earth's short solar cycle, sometimes I don't recharge at night. You toss and turn in your bed."

His cheeks felt hot, and he was glad that Bumblebee couldn't see it -- the revelation that the secret horrors that visited his sleep weren't as secret as he thought. He glanced at the reviewing mirror to let the fiery hot colors of the sun to blind him. "Sorry. I -- ah, didn't know I was bothering you."

"Sam. I understand that there are things that you wish to keep private -- I have many of these things myself ... but if there are things that you wish to share with someone, I am willing to listen."

"You're kidding, right?" Sam sighed, physical exhaustion catching up to his mental and emotional fatigue. "Bee -- you already play a chauffeur, you _don't_ want to be my therapist. You _really_ don't. Trust me, I should know. I live in here," he said, tapping his head.

"My offer is sincere," Bumblebee said, refusing to take the out, or let Sam have it for that matter. Sam would have pouted, but his nightmares were serious business and no mocking matter.

"It's just stupid nightmares," he said dismissively. "They've gotten better." Which was sadly truthful. He had gone from Silent Hill type horror to only Matrix level horror (he winced every time they brought up that whole 'plugging into the back of the head' thing).

"Alright," he said reluctantly, falling silent and driving, the flashing stripes blurring by.

Sam laid back, tilting his head until his neck was craned uncomfortably. He had always planned on keeping his stupid nightmares to himself, except for the times that Bumblebee called him on it, and ... and he had to learn. He had to learn to deal with all this stuff on his own, but ... it was hard to go cold turkey. It was hard, so ... the thought plagued him for several silent moments while Bumblebee drove (careful as ever) down the steadily darkening road. It was hard to go cold turkey, and it ... wasn't just a giant alien robot asking. That was his friend.

He closed his eyes tightly, so that his lids lit up orange, and said, "do you -- I mean ... well, if you really wanted to know --"

"I do," Bee interrupted him, voice intent.

Sam would just have to learn some other night. It was a weak imitation of that familiar warmth, but it was better than nothing, and so he began to talk.

-+-

Sam stumbled into the dark bathroom, having woken from that stupid wet-dream-gone-wrong. Only, it had gone _really_ wrong that time, because it was the start of the dream and he still went walking with the All Spark and the Autobot only it turned into the falling dream after which Optimus Prime asked him what had he done. Sam did _not_ need a combination dream, thanks anyway. He was already on his way to a break down.

He didn't bother turning on the light in the bathroom, since that would only blind him and make it harder to get back to sleep. He stumbled around for a moment in the darkness, then cast a wary look at the mirror, still remembering all of those junior high ghost stories about Bloody Mary and doppelgangers trapped in glass --

and his heart thundered painful under his chest and his skin prickled so suddenly it _hurt_ and he had been dunked in the Antarctic ocean because in the mirror was more than just the black shadow of himself -- _a pair of blue optics were staring at him_.

Sam threw himself violently at the light switch, thinking of nightmares and Frenzy-who-couldn't-die and slammed it on so hard that the switch _broke off_, spinning around as he strained to hear the whirl-click of moving 'bot.

But the bathroom was empty, so he looked where he saw it but only he was looking back, hazel eyes wide and pupils empty cavernous pools of terrified black.

-+-

He had sat on the edge of his bed all night, feeling odd tingles shoot up and down his arms and through his body. It felt kind of like he had pulled a whole network of muscles when he had gotten terrified in the bathroom, a whole webbing of pain that jerked and tingled and made his fingers twitch slightly. For long hours, he had just sat there, staring at his blank computer, thinking ... thinking. What could be wrong with him?

Seeing optics in the mirror -- that was the last straw. He could handle nightmares and Chernobyl and sleeping and eating and all of that. He could handle strange All Spark dreams and Arcee and mustering his courage to remind Bumblebee that he was only human and whatever else came his way. He could handle all of that, but when he started ... _seeing_ things, not just catching movements out of the corner of his eye ...

Well, that was too much. He had two possible answers to what was wrong with him, and he wasn't very excited by either of them.

The first possibility was that there was something _terribly_ wrong with him -- more than just Chernobyl in his chest, which was not unlike having a heart attack. That ... there was something ... that his brain ... that he might even be dying. Now. Not later, not due to a knife in the back, but that he was somehow dying already. (_That they had been right all along when they said from the other side of glass walls that he was dying, anyway_.)

The second possibility was that he really was going mad, and should be put down like a rabid dog. Well, he'd rather be put down and not put into an insane asylum. One Witwicky had already been wrongly imprisoned and died in one. He didn't want to be the second ... even if his term was more just.

Either way, he had to ... he had to _tell_ someone. They were both loathsome options -- and ... and he had to tell someone. It just .. made sense to make that someone Bumblebee. Bumblebee would be able to put the situation in perspective (hopefully), and tell him whether or not he was dying or going mad (or both).

In either case, that was why he left the house slouching and was reluctantly approaching the yellow robot parked in the drive. He reached out for reassurance, running his fingers along the seam of the hood. It was amusing the few times he managed to sneak up on the Autobot. Apparently, Bumblebee set up his scanners and then proceeded to check out the Internet human style sometimes, and Sam (being human for one and familiar for another) had surprised the bot once or twice.

This wasn't one of those times, the metal warm beneath his fingers and vibrating just enough that he could feel it. It zinged up his arm like bottled lightning and his pinky and a muscle in his arm twitched, even though it didn't hurt. He pulled the open door wide and slipped inside uncomfortably. For a bit of reassurance, he gripped the steering wheel and pretended to check out the speedometer. Bumblebee allowed him to get away with that for nearly ten minutes before he spoke up.

"Is there somewhere you wish to go?"

"Er, not exactly," Sam said tentatively. "I -- um, this is one of those things that I'd rather not speak about ... but first, who should I talk to about ... weird side effects of alien radiation?"

Bumblebee was silent for a moment. Then he turned on the engine abruptly and jerked out of the driveway, going fast enough that for a panicked moment, Sam thought there were Decepticons after them. The fancy electric seatbelt trapped him to the seat, and Sam was left gripping at it in alarm.

"Bumblebee?" he demanded, checking the outside and trying to judge whether or not they were going to be caught by cops.

"Please hold on, Sam," Bumblebee said tensely as they took another corner. "Ratchet's going to offline me as it is, and Optimus Prime will ban me from life."

"I'm holding on!" he yelped as they didn't managed to quiet stay on the road, then repeated the sentence to make sure it got through to the Autobot, even as he hysterically contemplated that it was possible Bumblebee was entertaining himself with the Internet way too much if he was worried Optimus Prime would 'ban' him from life. "_Where are we going and why are we getting there so quickly_?" he shrieked.

Bumblebee didn't answer for a moment, which was a good warning that Sam wouldn't like the answer. "One week after Mission City, the amount of radiation you had was negligible. The sort of radiation we and the All Spark produce is completely harmless to organics, it doesn't even induce nausea or raise chances for cancer, there was no reason to be concerned ..." He seemed to be trying to reason with himself. "It must have increased so slowly --"

"Increased? What? Where?" Sam demanded, somewhat hysterically. He felt he had the right, considering that Bumblebee was hardly staying calm.

"Please remain calm," Bumblebee said tensely. "The radiation should have faded. You are currently producing enough radiation to make Sector Seven -- were it still in existence -- seizure with joy."

Sam let that sink in for about three streets, then swallowed hard. "I think I'm going to throw up," he informed the talking car.

"This is likely a reaction to stress," Bee informed him, the grinding of metal just barely discernable and promising that he was just as strung out over the entire thing as Sam. Therefore, Sam politely swallowed again and practiced the ancient human martial art of denial.

The rest of the trip was spent alternately staring blankly and trying to figure out what could possibly be wrong with him. Maybe the radiation had seriously impacted his brain ... it would certainly explain all of the weird dreams and his problems in general. Sure, All Spark radiation might not cause nausea (obviously not, he'd been eating like a bottomless pit) or instigate cancer, but that didn't mean it wouldn't seriously affect how a person's brain worked. That could easily explain great grandfather Archibald, and maybe it was just his turn to spend some time in an insane asylum.

Upon arriving at the Autobots' hideout, Sam slid calmly out of the car and waved jauntily at the green-yellow mech waiting for them. Before Bumblebee had even finished transforming back to his more natural form, Ratchet had _picked Sam up_ and was stalking off toward the medical bay, scanning him the entire time.

"Wow, okay, this is rude," he said conversationally.

"He's in shock," Bumblebee chimed in fretfully from some feet below. As Ratchet was holding Sam up at head-level, the ground was a long way down and Bee wasn't nearly as tall as Ratchet.

"He's nearly doubled his weight, Bumblebee!" Ratchet apparently found something he didn't like and sighed heavily. "This is definitely going to have to be brought before Prime ... sooner, rather than later."

"It's not Bumblebee's fault," Sam objected, frowning.

"Sam, you've doubled your weight," Ratchet repeated, as if he were being slow. "Granted, some allowance could be made for strength -- if you put it on slow enough, the daily rides with Bumblebee would have recalibrated each time for your expected weight, and he would have never noticed -- _but_ when Bumblebee asked to guard you, I thought I could rely on him!" Bumblebee made a whining grinding noise while Ratchet's optics did strange things as he scanned Sam. "It looks as though it's nearly all mineral deposits ... your bones have altered remarkably in structure ... uh oh."

"That doesn't sound good," Sam said reasonably.

"_What's _'uh oh'?" Bumblebee demanded, an undercurrent of straining metal trembling up from below Sam.

Ratchet sighed, both audibly and by blowing air across his complex inner components, where all the vital things were. "You aren't going to like this, but it appears that Sam's entire digestive track, as well as his respiratory system has been altered ... significantly. It appears these changes are old ... "

"Sam had a sore throat for nearly a week after I got him home," Bumblebee offered as they stepped inside the medical bay. It was fairly obvious that it had been reworked ... normal automotive parts lay everywhere, as well as cables and wires (he shivered). There was a platform as well, large enough for even Optimus Prime to lay on.

"I think that for now it would be safe to say that these ... alterations have been for the purpose of collecting materials to rework his entire structure; there are heavy mineral deposits in your bones and organs. There appear to be special organs grown solely for storing them, but there also appears to be a metal ... his skin is well on it's way to developing similar structures ... Sam, _Cybertronians_ regularly grow in such a manner, collecting elements from the air and altering it's composition into something we can add to our frame, or use it to heal our armor."

Sam remained quiet for a moment while he absorbed all of that information. "What?" he inquired, thinking he had perhaps heard that wrong. Just to make certain, he repeated himself: "What was that?" Then he realized that there was no way that sentence could have made sense if he heard it wrong -- so he must have heard right. "No! No, no, no, it doesn't _work_ like that!" he shrieked. Both Autobots winced, and Ratchet gently tumbled Sam out of his palm and onto the table. It was terribly rude, and he didn't much care for the way Bumblebee immediately plucked him up and set him on his feet, either.

"Can't you do something, Ratchet?" Bumblebee demanded hovering over Sam while Ratchet moved away to find something. "You know this isn't good!"

"I don't know," Ratchet said heavily. "I'm trying to figure that out."

"_Bumblebee_," Sam hissed. "I thought I was going insane, not -- _being taken over by alien technology_!"

The car alarm squeaked several times, as if it kept trying to go off but Bumblebee kept stopping it. Ratchet turned quickly, optics narrowed in clear agitation. It was only at this point that Sam realized that Ratchet must have been working on stripping the outer structure on his face to attach the expression mask. Of course, no Cybertronian really needed to use his face to get his emotion across, because the loud and rapid clicking and whirling was a clear indication of agitation.

"You!" Ratchet shouted, pointing at Bumblebee. "Get out of my med bay!"

"But Sam --"

Ratchet picked up the largest piece of automotive miscellany at hand and lifted it threateningly. It was a bit fascinating to watch two relatively large 'bots move so quickly. Sam had seen them often enough that he was accustomed to the graceful dancer like moves -- but they usually had an air of ... well, heft and weight, like several tons of large creature moving. Not so in a fight, but Sam had _forgotten_ since Mission city, so the sudden scuffle that broke out when Ratchet set to the task of chasing Bumblebee from the room, possibly after bashing his head in, was very fascinating. They moved so _quick_!

Bumblebee did manage to escape without injury, but not without playing the part of the car alarm that Sam was sure _still_ meant 'up yours'. He didn't know if he should laugh or run for his life.

Ratchet huffed, lowering his 'club' and turning back to the sorta-human in the room. "Now, then," he said, setting it lightly aside and approaching him. "I'll have to perform several tests on you, Sam. Don't worry; with Mikaela here, I've had plenty of opportunity to learn more about your species, so none of this should be ... weird. Bumblebee said that you had a sore throat after Mission City?"

"Er, yeah," Sam said, rubbing his arm and giving it doubtful looks. If his bones were metal, that meant they were struts, and if they were struts -- would they peel him off and walk away? "Actually, I pretty much had one shortly after the battle -- but I don't know, I thought it was because I inhaled a lot of dust."

"It's possible that was part of it, Sam," Ratchet assured him.

"Ratchet," he said tensely, "I thought I was going insane like my great grandfather. What does this mean? Is it going to -- to kill me, or take me over, or what? Am I going to be a ... a cyborg?"

The distant aspect to Ratchet's optics disappeared as he visibly stopped scanning Sam for a moment. He hesitated, then said, "Sam, I don't know ... nothing like this has ever happened before. Cybertron's wildlife was as metal as we are, but organics such as yourself have been in contact with the All Spark ... all those years at Sector Seven ... there were no abnormalities in their bodies or their brains. Whatever is happening to you is singular ... but on the other hand, I am a rather good medic, so if anyone could figure it out, that should be me. I will do my best to help you, Sam. It'll help if you tell me everything that has changed."

"A ... alright," he said slowly. "Well, I've been sleeping a lot, and eating way more than I should -- I guess that was part of the whole collecting mineral process, huh?"

"It's very likely," Ratchet confirmed. "It appears that the structures in your lungs that allow oxygen to attach to the hemoglobin in your blood has been duplicated -- and altered -- in your digestive track. I hypothesize that very little of the nutrients you've consumed have gone to waste. Normally the human body isn't very efficient ... it appears that does not hold to yours."

Sam grimaced with discomfort. His 'digestive track' was not exactly something he wanted to discuss with a giant robot, doctor or not. "I don't know if it's related, but I've had a lot of nightmares -- and they all feature the All Spark. I mean, it made sense, you know? It's this amazing ... giant cube. It was the Cybertronian ... _mother_, of everyone. It made sense to be a little focused on it, so I didn't think it was that weird. I mean, it's not always nightmares, this last month, but ... anyway. That, and sometimes I get really angry, and it feels like ... well, I think of it as Chernobyl. It doesn't happen all the time, but I ... definitely never felt like that before."

Ratchet made a thoughtful sound, and Sam winced and decided not to ask. He wasn't sure he could hear it right now.

"That, and ... the food I eat ... I don't think I really _taste_ it anymore. I'm ... too busy thinking about how old the food is and how much of it is _really_ organic or not. That could just be psychosomatic --"

"It's not," Ratchet said.

"Oh," he said blankly. "Um, okay." He bit his lip for a moment. "That's pretty much the only things I've noticed. You said I _doubled in weight_?" At the affirmative he received, he was quick to object. "That's impossible!" Sam said, shaking his head and waving his arms as if to chase the thought away. "I would have noticed --"

"Not necessarily," Ratchet said, and it wasn't quiet obvious if he was hedging or just being off-hand and distracted.

"_Yes_, necessarily!" he said a little hysterically, waving his arms some more for good measure. _One_ of these times, it would work, he was _sure_. "I should be sore as hell, if moving at all!"

"Only approximately one hundred pounds of the weight is in mineral and metallic substance," Ratchet said, giving him a sever look before he returned to scanning. "The extra weight that makes it double is in muscle mass."

Sam gave him an incredulous look.

"Hmm, nice expression, I'll have to add that one," Ratchet said absently while Sam was distracted with molesting himself to find this supposed muscle mass he had put on. Ratchet continued on the subject at hand, possibly with the incredibly ill-conceived idea that more information would make it better. "Simply put, your healing has been accelerated. As quickly as the strain from carrying the weight tears the muscle, it's healed."

Halting his self-examination, he ogled the giant robot. "Oh god," he said faintly. "I'm _Wolverine_?"

Ratchet cross-referenced that and scoffed. "I seriously doubt it'll stay that way. _You_ don't have 'mutant powers'." A few thoughtful clicks, and then Ratchet continued. "You know about cloning, correct? Then you've heard about Dolly the Sheep?"

"Of course," he confirmed, a little hysterically. What, was he going to pull some ... weird _mirror_ thingy and _split in half and then there'd be two of him_?! He wasn't ready to begin living a twisted version of some scifi sitcom!

"Then you should know about cell age."

Well, that wasn't a 'you're going to give fission to a clone'. "Cell what?" he inquired, a little calmer.

Ratchet sighed. "Organics, such as yourself, have cells that divide. Alloys don't, that's why Cybertronians live until we're deactivated. Cell age is how many times a cell can divide -- the more times it has, the weaker and less sturdy the structure is. That's what aging is -- the cells have divided as much as they can while remaining stable enough to support life. Healing requires an elevated cell division rate. The more cells split, the quicker they age ..."

" ... so you're saying that because I'm regenerating so quickly to be able to haul around this extra weight, I'm also aging prematurely."

"Precisely."

Sam swooned for a moment, but didn't actually black out or throw up, though either one of those sounded like a good idea to him. He couldn't even cry. "What does that have to do with cloning?" he asked weakly.

"Nothing, truly. I happened across it while researching cell growth."

Sam began to laugh.

" ... perhaps you should rest?"

He sputtered for a moment, got control of himself ... thought about Ratchet's tone and looked up suspiciously. "There's more, isn't there?" he demanded weakly.

"Sam, your life signs are becoming more erratic than I think is strictly safe."

"But you don't know, do you!" he snapped. "Because -- I'm a -- a _freak_, something's taking over my _body_, there's _something wrong with me_!"

"We don't know that for certain," Ratchet said tensely. "Just because you are no longer _human,_ doesn't mean you're a 'freak'. We don't know if something is 'taking over your body', and until I do more, I don't know if there is something wrong with you."

"_I'm growing metal_," he shrieked, "_I think it's pretty obvious that isn't __**right**_!"

Ratchet stepped back and put his hands on his hips, looking something like an angry mother, which wasn't the sort of visual Sam exactly needed. "If you can't control yourself, I'll put you in stasis until I figure this out!"

And as weirded out, _freaked_ out, and frightened as Sam was, Chernobyl wasn't burning and he could control himself to a certain extent. With a groan, he rubbed his face, sighing and generally making a production of despair. "Alright, alright," he said, "can I even be _put_ in stasis? Wait. Don't answer that. Whatever. There's more, isn't there?"

" ... yes," Ratchet said grudgingly. "There's more. Your body is riddled with ... energy patterns. Nothing is conducting it besides your own water-filled cells ... so it shouldn't have such a steady or intricate structure. It's definitely following a pathway ... which means that the energy is flowing in such a pattern for a reason. The point is, it all originates from your central nervous system."

Central nervous system -- it had been two years since biology, as he took it his freshman year, but -- _oh crap_, wasn't that his _spinal cord_? "What the hell is it doing there?" he demanded, sucking desperately for air.

"It's _been_ there, Sam," Ratchet said. "Since Mission City. The human nervous system communicates through it's own electrical impulses. It's ... it should have shorted you out, or put you in a coma. You should be ... brain dead from over stimulation. An organic brain isn't meant to handle that level of input."

"Then why haven't I?" he demanded. It was possible he wasn't actually accepting any of this information. He was much too calm to be hearing that he was a zombie.

"It's managing that as well," Ratchet said stiffly. "I don't think you've been sensing the world in a human manner for well over two months now. You've been running entirely off of this energy. On the bright side, it's fully converted your central nervous system into alloy, so there isn't any concern about it destroying the cells it's inhabiting."

And -- well, that was pretty much all Sam really remembered.

* * *

- Sam's episode in the bathroom was just his mind playing tricks on him.

- Thought I'd explain that while Bumblebee's got some really good scanners and sensors, they _aren't_ good enough to pick up pheromones. He's a scout, not a 'healer'. As a matter of fact, I'm not too sure of the logic behind Ratchet even knowing the meaning behind the pheromones Sam was emitting. _Technically_, Ratchet's a mechanic, not a doctor. It doesn't make much sense for him to know or even _learn_ anything about organics, since HAVE YOU SEEN THE SIZE OF HIM? Even OUR doctors sometimes go, "This work is too delicate for our tools!"

That said, Ratchet does have scanners that 'x-ray' through Cybertronian alloy. If it can go through metal, it can go through humans.

- Sam and Bee would have gotten there without Sam turning all metally. Actually, I'm pretty sure that Sam mutating just really, _really_ slowed them down ...


	9. Jacked Up

**Chapter Nine: Jacked Up  
**" ... and by teenaged boy, I mean narrow-minded and too attached to his reproductive organs," Peturi finished.

-+-

(There was a monster under his skin.)

His breaths were harsh and loud and echoing in the porcelain and cement-concrete bathroom, acoustics grasping the sound of his own hissing air and the flat rubber snap of his shoes on the floor. The fluorescent light was old and flickering, white-white-gray-flicker-crackle-snap-white. He was pale and haunted in the mirror, stark in the colorless monochrome and the light flicker-crackle-snapped overhead. _Dim-bright-dim-bright-dim-bright._ He set trembling hands to the cold-cold white painted sink and they looked so frail and bony (but he knew the truth because there was a monster beneath).

His eyes were too dark and his tanned skin was flour-powder-pale under the burnt shades and he had dark green-kissed shadows around his too-dark eyes. His cheeks were hollow and his face was sharp and his breath hissed and quickened as he searched (for what was underneath what was taking him over) but there was nothing but him in the mirror (and it was a damn fucking lie).

The room twirled teasingly and the echo was a dull roar and his head swam so he shut his mouth and bent over the sink to press his forehead (ever so gently) against the cold ceramic sink for a while, fingers pressing into the unyielding structure and he shut himself up so that there was only the bright-crackle-white beneath the night of the sky in his eyes and no other noise at all. (No other noise but the snap-crackle and he strove to be as empty as the empty echoing cement room _hollow _cold _lifeless _and still and he tried to be notthere _don't breathe _don't move_ notthere _empty _lifeless _not -- until he felt as still and lifeless and cold as the synthetic gray and white cold dead matter all around him like a cocoon made of ashes _of burnt people _burnt bones_ his own body cremated in Chernobyl's fires_.)

When he finally (slowly) straightened, he was disappointed he couldn't (see through the lie _see optics instead of brown _lie _liar _lie and_ where does that get you _fake _monster_ mask?) brush his hair, make himself look a little more presentable (but what did it matter, really?). With a swift move, he pulled his sweater off over his head, following it with his shirts, tossing them carelessly about (because it didn't matter who felt the heat boiling off of the thing in his chest because _it was him_). Then he turned on the faucet, picked up the jar next to the sink up, and began to fill it. The water was cold, but he didn't care.

He bent over the sink, pouring another jar of water over the back of his head, shivering and tense and gasping as it ran down around his ears and poured off his face, running over his eyes and dribbling off the tip of his nose.

(_freak_)

-+-

Three days. (One-two-three, one-two-three ... waltz ... waltz ... step-step-pause.) It took three days before Sam was truly lucid again -- or so Bumblebee had informed him when he had asked. (three days in the dark but for the polite headlights on Bumblebee's chest and two glowing blue optics in the dark.) Staying in a hanger with no one but Bumblebee and little light (and burning with fever from a Chernobyl that was not so fictional as he'd thought). Bumblebee was helpful, though, even as Sam was living one of his nightmares, and was trying to claw off his own skin on occasion, trying to get rid of the monster inside of him before it could peel off _him_ (body horror, Ratchet explained, was a fairly normal human psychological response. It was both a primal fear, and a natural response to a body-invader, which was how Sam unconsciously perceived his own altered organs). He didn't associate it with the Autobots, though ... not as Ratchet had feared. (Foolish thought why would he blame them they only _lead him to it_ and _made him hold it_ and _then he killed Megatron with it._)

Three days of being isolated in a room but for a talking Camaro, and Sam couldn't decide if he'd actually became lucid, or if the thing living in his spine was simply controlling his responses again. But he liked to rest against Bumblebee's yellow hood, ears tickling with the subsonic vibrations that was the Cybertronian equivalent of a calming hand on the shoulder, feeling the worry and insecurity and concern in the magnetic field that the Autobot produced uncontrollably. Apparently, the field could be compared to human pheromones in that respect.

(He was such an idiot.)

Of course, he spent the first day he was lucid talking to Bumblebee and trying to reassure the Autobot that it wasn't his fault for failing to notice that Sam was putting on weight that wasn't equal to his body mass, or that he was hearing the Cybertronian inflections a little _too_ well, or that humans weren't _that_ capable of communicating through the energy fields. Though Ratchet confirmed that while the changes were comparatively sudden, it would have been just as equally hard to sense them without _looking_ for them. It was a sensory flaw, and even if they had caught it earlier, Sam's kidnapping by Sector Seven had sealed his fate. Ratchet had managed to pin down the exact time it was too late to evacuate the energy in Sam's spine, which was five hours after the battle. At that point, the cells in Sam's spine were essentially irreversibly corrupted and to deprive the cells of the energy would have killed Sam.

Therefore, Sam explained reasonably, it was entirely Sector Seven's fault, and while he already had a personal vendetta against them, it had just gotten _really_ personal.

(It was only in the quiet when he's alone that Sam was a little shaky about it. The monster beneath his flesh. He hated it. _itsgoingtopeelhimoffandleavehimbehindandnonewillknowthedifference._)

"Ratchet wants to see you in the med bay," Bumblebee said softly.

"Tough on him," Sam said, still studying the inflamed gouges on his skin from where his nails had bit deeply before he'd been stopped. He sighed and tugged his shirt back into place, leaning back against the warm alloy. Four days of being around one another nonstop, and yet ... he didn't particularly want Bumblebee to go away. Not even if it were to trade places with Mikaela or anything. A part of him was still self-conscious enough to hope that Bumblebee wasn't feeling burdened by having spent so much time with him with only breaks for Sam to wonder off and have psychotic fits in the restroom.

(Ha! He still had a sense of humor. That was a relief.)

Other than yesterday, they hadn't spoken a word to one another. For his part, he hadn't been lucid enough to talk, and Bumblebee informed him that he was remaining 'in the loop' through radio communications with the others. Once Sam had come around (through denial; it was an effective coping mechanism, he discovered -- denying, of course, that he had used the same method often in the past), there _was_ damage control to be done. Bumblebee had somehow convinced himself that it was his fault and that just wouldn't do.

(_Sam or the humans, Sam or the humans -- that's what it came down to and Sam knew that the victory of his motto was not always __**his**__ victory._)

Ratchet had taken care of his parents and Mikaela, who took care of Miles, it seemed. His parents had been informed that Sam had some very important things to do with the Autobots, and since he was their ward, his parents really had no claim to him (Sam hoped desperately that Ratchet had not actually _said_ that, but considering what he knew of the medic, he had said _worse_ than that). Mikaela had been informed that it was Sam's business whether or not to tell her, and that he was going through a hard time and to have patience (which was such a Bumblebee thing to say that Sam knew he must have called the girl himself).

What she had told Miles was so far unknown, but Sam had a shiver of apprehension every time he thought about it. She had learned well from being around them how to be so utterly serious when saying something outlandish ...

"Sam," Bumblebee said reluctantly, drawing his attention from trying to feel the difference in his hands. "I know what Ratchet wants to talk to you about."

He craned his head around to study Bee's expression before he returned to bending his hands. "I don't want to know," he said flatly.

Metal fingers settled gently on his shoulder, the palm against his back. No pressure, just the massive precision of processors calculating the exact distance and holding the position effortlessly. "You don't need to do this, yet." Bumblebee withdrew his hand again.

Yet. (What was he -- metal_monster_human? His brain was metal, what he thought with -- his body not his own. What made a human _human_, because he certainly didn't feel_think_live any differently. _"... do you think they have souls?"_ his mother asked, an echo from his memory, and he remembered with such surety saying: _"Of course."_) His breath was steady, but he felt the web of apprehension trembling under his skin (next to his bones) like a spider plucking at silk inquisitively. He watched his fingers twitch, the fluid-as-ever(like liquid_water_oil) movement of his joints as he clenched a fist. (It doesn't work any differently, it still tastes like salt and smells like flesh and it prickles into gooseflesh under icy cold water but his body isn't his anymore and he didn't know when he lost it _and that makes it worse_.)

(Who was Sam Witwicky anymore?)

He wiggled his toes inside his sneakers, then asked, "what is it that Ratchet wants to talk about?" His voice sounded hollow and flat to his ears, as if he were wrapped in cloth and there was nothing for it to echo off of to give it character.

" ... Sooner or later, Ratchet must tap into your network," Bumblebee said. "The theory is that you must have software running the conversion. To do that ... will require a human doctor, to physically connect you to a transmitter and receiver."

Sam stilled, listening to his breathing (in. Out. In. Out.) and the rush-rush of blood through his ears. In. Out. In. Out. His fingertips left his temple, where he had been tracking the beating of his heart. "Well," he said briskly, standing. (A quiet unseen tremble through his body as he remembered _it was not his_. And if it wasn't his then what did it matter if someone cut it open and attached things to not-his-body or took him away and took him apart just to see what made him_ tick_. It was _not__**his**__body_.) "If it's gotta be sooner or later, we might as well start talking now ... I mean, it's sped up, right? It's not like I have much of a choice."

That earned him one of Bumblebee's odd little sympathetic noises, and then the two of them began to navigate their way to Ratchet's building. Outside seemed too harsh, suddenly -- the sun too bright, the air too dry, too wide too empty and the sky stretched overhead in a blank blue imitation of the night time vacuum that heralded _we are not alone -- they are here, the enemy_.

(Time was fluid, as the mechanical aliens he walked with -- immortal, but everything changes in a matter of seconds. An expedition become an alien discovery became a teenage boy buying a car that was really a robot became a fight for survival and the right of his planet to live became a scream of defiance and falling -- becomes the loss of self. Timeless things that changed in an instant --

_Don't blink or you'll miss it_.

Four days. Everything had changed.)

(_It's 'Witwicky'_ he used to say and what did it matter but that _Witwicky_ changed everything and everything changed _him_.)

"I'm surprised to see you today, truthfully," Ratchet grumbled as they entered the room. He carelessly plucked Sam up and set him on the table, then cast Bumblebee an evil ugly look when the yellow mech dared to make a disagreeably noise. "And _you_ keep your mouth shut," he threatened. "One _word_ out of you and I block up your vocals so tightly you'll spend _another_ thousand years mute!"

"_What_ was that?" Sam asked sharply, a familiar flicker of Chernobyl kindling in his chest. He felt tense and hollow and empty (and mechanical and he understood Chernobyl better than ever before -- the blood tried to cool it, but it was a closed circuit and while it burned a meltdown was _inevitable_); this was what he was (a mechanical man, like a superhero but _heroes are fake_). A flicker of cold terror froze Chernobyl in his chest, and he finished wry, no power to keep his venom: "All due respect, _doc_, but you shouldn't poke the things with cannons."

Ratchet scoffed at him. "You shouldn't poke Megatron, either."

(His ears ringing, the room _too-too_ empty, and the awkward silence as the words sunk _into_ his brain.) "I know that." Voice a little too loud, too bright. (Nothing to know _but_ that; it's _because of_ that --)"Com'n, look where it got me."

All three nodded sagely at that before moving on with business. "The simplest way to do this would to be a quick and clean implant. With both the central nervous system and the implant in question being alloy, it shouldn't take much invasive work. We have to do it _soon_, as well, as at the conversion's current sped, your spinal bones will fully converted into alloy, and that would make things ... difficult. You might not respond to anesthesia, and there isn't any telling when you might develop a manner of entering stasis, so it would be painful."

Sam thought this over for a bit, then blinked at Ratchet. "You want to implant a jack in my spine."

"Actually," Ratchet said, "I'll be implanting a _socket_ for a jack in your spine."

More staring. Still more staring. Sam continued to stare and didn't have any plan to stop staring. He was pretty much singularly unimpressed with the proposal, needless to say. While Ratchet and Sam seized each other up, Bumblebee looked back and forth between them as if there was some sort of actual activity to observe. Finally, Sam's left eyebrow slid ever-so-slowly up his forehead until it was arched very prominently. "Ratchet," he said slowly, "no offense, but this thing has converted my body like crazy using normal _Earth_ minerals. I didn't even know Earth minerals could be converted into Cybertronian alloy!" His point made (he had a point? Other than Hell No?), he crossed his arms and glowered.

"Only one of our people could do so," Ratchet huffed. "Otherwise, the humans would have been using it and creating little Frankenstein monsters along with the stolen technology."

"Yeah, about that ... sorry, and _gross_. Though, technically this means that it would be ... Simmonstein monsters."

Ratchet didn't seemed too impressed with his wit. "... anyway, Sam, I don't need to remind you that since we've discovered it, it's picked up the pace even _more_? I don't think the implant will really affect much. I made them myself, and I've found a surgeon. Not only will you be awake for the procedure, there won't be any pain, and it would be fairly easy to break down and relocate the alloy, should the energy signature decide. You won't be walking around with sockets permanently there, if that is what bothers you."

"No, _poking the energy signature_ is what bothers me. You poked it enough with your scanners, and got it a little anxious! I don't even want to know what would happen if you try _talking_ to it. What if you insult it? It could be sensitive." Bumblebee made an agreeable chirp, which was apparently not a noise and therefore not a violation of the agreement. Sam would _never_ get the social structure of their society.

Ratchet huffed, and Sam watched in mild fascination. While Ratchet had managed to affix a (much paler) expression mask to his face -- having to reconfigure not only his facial structure but his overall helmet as well -- and it was still neat to watch, it was just ... less so. Bumblebee had such a dynamic face ... perhaps from being more familiar with humans than the others, but Sam didn't think that completely explained his fascination and okay, he wasn't going to think about that anymore, no matter how shiny it (and Bumblebee) was.

He did notice that Bumblebee's mask was constructed in a way that gave the illusion of wider eyes and Ratchet's tended to frown a lot. Or maybe Sam just made Ratchet frown a lot. Right now, that was fine with him, as he wasn't too pleased and doing plenty of frowning himself.

"If I put a jack in," Ratchet said, scowling at Bee before turning back to Sam, "It's possible I could download some information from it. In other words, I might be able to find out the intentions of the conversions, perhaps even schematics for the changes. It could be predicted what the end result would be."

"Oh." Sam bit his lip and thought that over. On one hand was Frankenstein, on the other, maybe there was even a way to _stop_ and _reverse_ it! "So, um ... tell me about this surgeon?"

Bumblebee made an alarmed squealing noise (metal against metal) at that, sitting up and shooting Sam an incredulous look. He was pretty good at that expression.

"Listen," Sam said tensely, "Right now we don't know _what_ is happening to me, only that I have some ... strange ... spark-like thing in my spine that's turning me to metal. What if it's not nice? What if it's really taking me over and we don't know because I won't let anyone touch it, and by the time we find out it's _bad_, it's too late and it hurts someone?"

"No need to frighten the kid," Ratchet said sternly, and it startled Sam to realize he was talking about _Bumblebee_. Sam had been so wrapped up in the fact that something was _in his body_, possibly _taking him over_ that he hadn't even thought about how others might be taking it. Now that he looked, though, he could tell that Bumblebee _was_ royally upset over the entire thing.

It was only _then_ that he began to wonder about how Mikaela might take it, or his parents, or what he was going to do about _Miles_. "Jesus Christ," he muttered, bending over his seat on the platform to rest his head on his hands. With the sort of patience of soldiers accustomed to waiting for an enemy to strike, and beings that lived until they were killed, the two Autobots let him have a moment. "Well," he said finally, "I want to get the socket put in. I want to know what the hell it's doing to me. So, if you think this surgeon can be trusted ..."

"It would be for the best," Ratchet said wryly. "While I am no stranger to precision work ... I've never worked on a bot that would be comparable to your size."

"You have bots my size? Wait -- God, that was a stupid question, after all, I've seen Frenzy."

Ratchet made a scoffing noise. "That little glitch does have a Spark of his own, but he's not a proper mech. He's ..." The large mech seemed to be searching for a way to say it. "Well, a lot was sacrificed for his ability to get back up and keep moving, despite damage to his body."

Sam made the connection pretty quickly -- but he _had_ dealt with Frenzy before. "You mean he's missing a few circuits."

"That sums it up,"Ratchet confirmed. "He'd dependant on a partner to take care of him. In the short run, he can take care of himself, which means he can do special operative work, but in the long run, he still needs a real mech to take refuge within. He needs massive amounts of recharge; otherwise his core suffers instability."

That was an awful lot of information for them to have. Tentatively, he looked questioningly at Ratchet, and then Bumblebee. It was the latter who spoke, reluctantly.

"Frenzy had a counterpart -- named Rumble. They were virtually identical except for a few superficial differences."

_Had_ a counterpart. Sam nodded grimly.

"But that has nothing to do with this," Ratchet said, casting Bumblebee a warning look. "There _is_ a function class of comparable size to you."

"Great," he said mildly. Then a thought occurred to him: "Wait, do you mean models like Arcee, because if I'm not _just_ turning into a robot but a _girl_ robot --"

"Oh, no, no," Ratchet said, waving his hands as if he thought Sam would attack him. He was pretty wrong about what Sam would take offense at, since Sam had only seriously considered attacking Ratchet way back when they first came in. "Each function class has exactly that -- a function. Some models are outdated, some even before the war started ... something as small as what I am speaking of wouldn't fulfil Arcee's function. Her model style is built to be agile and must faster than the larger, bulkier models, and she communicates on a higher frequency. We can't hear the higher frequencies she can, and she can't hear the lower ones that we can."

"Then ... if I turn into one of these models, and not just ... into some mutated ... freak thing, what are they specialized for?"

"They aren't," Ratchet said bluntly. "They do what ever they can wherever they can. They're ... a bit like a Swiss army knife, whereas a bot like Ironhide is a machete and Arcee is a switchblade, understand?"

Sam stared at the bot for a moment, trying to comprehend if he actually just heard the medic compare Autobots to _knives_. "Y-yeah, I think so. Ironhide does a hell of a lot of damage, Arcee does it quick, and the small 'bots have a corkscrew, because opening a bottle of wine on the battlefield is of utmost importance."

Bumblebee's radio sputtered and his battle mask flipped down, possibly to hide whatever expression he was making ... as if the radio sputter hadn't given it away that he was amused.

Ratchet shook his head at the bot and turned back to Sam. "You can't really think of it in terms of gender, Sam. If you decide to consider each model a gender, then we have upwards of a hundred."

That was enough to break his brain. What in the heck did all these different robots _do_ that was so specialized? "So -- wait, wait, I think Bee _kind of_ touched on this, but I wasn't paying attention -- if you have a hundred genders, _how do you reproduce_?"

Ratchet stared at him with a mildly mortified expression. "Nothing like I assume you are imagining," he said gruffly.

Great, Sam had just offended Ratchet's apparently delicate sensibilities. "You're the one that said you had a hundred genders."

"I said if you _must_ think of it that way," he rumbled unhappily. A moment later he added, "in the Golden Age of Cybertron, there were massive mechs -- existing as both extensions of Cybertron and as separate beings. A crass way of putting it would be to say that these were sentient factories. As the need rose for a specific model, the factory would create those models. Sparks would be captured from the All Spark, and the mech would be activated. A rough translation -- we'd call these entities _Grand Mothers_. It is not ... completely incorrect. As the face of Cybertron changed, models had to be updated, and the mechs tending to the Grand Mothers would redesign the models as required."

Consider Sam's mind _blown_. "Oh my God, alien robots are like _bugs_!"

Ratchet sighed, shaking his head some more. Sam had the thought that maybe he wanted to grease those gears a bit more if he were going to do that so often. "To get back on topic, Samuel Witwicky, there aren't many minibots around anymore. While very versatile, they aren't exactly made for surviving a fight, no matter how much additional armor they come with. It doesn't help that they try to plead neutrality, either; Megatron slaughtered many of them, just as he slaughtered the Chasebots before they sided with Optimus Prime. Not all function classes have a set up like the Chasebots, however, and largely all minibots continued to argue neutrality.

"It's a long history, and possibly irrelevant. We won't know until I tap in and try to find out if there are any codes of information I can decipher."

Sam made a noncommittal noise, trying to wrap his mind around that. "So ... um, when am I gonna ... go cyborg, then?"

"Well," Ratchet said with a bemused expression. "The surgeon I spoke to seemed thrilled with the idea, and I could probably get her down here within the hour."

"Fun times," Sam said dryly. "Don't I have to not be eating, or something? Like, twenty four hours before surgery?"

"Doctor Peturi assured me that the process could be done without that by using local anesthesia." Ratchet fiddled with his armor for a moment and then his fingers ... rearranged in a disturbing manner and a small robotic arm that wouldn't have been out of place on Frenzy protruded from around his wrist, dipping into some hidden compartment. Sam winced when he brought his arm around to show what the small arm held. "This is the jack socket we'll be attaching to you," he explained, then maneuvered the entire structure so that he could point to the comparatively tiny thing. "We won't be splicing the wires in, that could be dangerous, but they will be attached with a simple adherent to the alloy. All Cybertronians have a structure like this, so there should be no complications with the data transfer."

Perhaps noticing just how pale and sweaty Sam had become, he made a 'clearing his throat' noise and tucked the socket away. It looked a little like the reverse love-child of a flash drive and a phone line, honestly, with a few wires hanging free. "I reworked a PC for this," he explained, gesturing to the reconstructed tower nearby. "It will wirelessly transfer the information to me."

"Why not just ... hook up directly?" Sam asked, not entirely certain he wanted to be directly linked to something that was Megatron's bastard retarded child, possibly also fathered by Agent Simmons or the ancestor thereof.

"Cybertronians avoid doing those things, though it is possible," Ratchet explained. "It puts both at risk of the other hacking them. Only in dangerous situations do we connect like that."

Sam blinked. "But I couldn't possibly hack you," he objected.

Ratchet shook his head. "It would be nice to think that, but naive. You're a complete unknown, Sam -- it is better to be safe than sorry."

"Besides the communication jack that Ratchet's installing," Bumblebee chimed in, breaking his temporary vow of silence, "we also have a power cable."

Ratchet shot him an annoyed look. "That's true," he agreed reluctantly. "But if things go wrong while linked that way, memory wipes, burned out diodes, and melted processors are the _least_ of your worries."

Sam stared. "But then why have one at all?" Wouldn't dangerous or superfluous parts just be ... not included in the construction?

"It's possible to online someone who is otherwise incapable of onlining themselves using one," Ratchet explained. "Which is exactly why it's dangerous. That's a full shot of energy directly into the unprotected circuits. It bypasses the safety measures provided by our alloy."

"Of course, those can be overwhelmed -- no matter how polarized a mech makes their plates, it's still alloy," Bumblebee said, then smiled with a startlingly _evil_ look. "Remember that I lead Barricade to the power plant to fight him? That knocked him offline for a few hours." Then, clearly disgruntled, he added, "even that much power didn't do much permanent damage, though. He was probably online by the time you met with Optimus Prime."

And Cybertronians could wipe memory and _melt processors_? Good God, what kind of voltage did they have? "How is this not killing me, again?" he demanded.

"The spark-like energy is exceptionally weak," Ratchet said. "If you were Cybertronian, you'd probably be registered as dead at first glance at the laser core. As far as I can tell, it's exhausting itself in the conversion of your body ... and as I said, it converted where it was staying at first opportunity so that you could survive it resting. Changing Earth minerals and flesh or bone into alloy is hardly easy."

"I ... see," Sam said slowly. "And what does Optimus Prime have to say about all of this?"

"Optimus Prime wishes to have all the information before he acts," Ratchet answered. "Which means that he may speak to you depending on what we find."

"Ah." He chewed on his lip. "So ... this surgeon. She's going to know about you guys?"

Ratchet made an uncomfortable noise. Bumblebee apparently took this as his cue to chime in. "After the battle, Ratchet was accidentally commandeered by her during the effort to help injured people, as he apparently took the form of a rescue truck. Long story short, humans are remarkably excited by the idea of 'giant alien robots'."

Sam cleared his throat with embarrassment, studying the ceiling with some interest. "Yeah, well, it's all worked out fine." Both Autobots simultaneously make identical noises signifying that they did _not_ agree with that. He shot them a strange look. "Then what are you not telling me?" he demanded.

"There is nothing very disagreeable going on that you don't know about, Sam," Ratchet said, "I assume both Bumblebee and myself are not pleased with the current situation."

"Yeah! Well, I'm not thrilled with it either," he said, throwing his hands up. "But by the sound of it, I either ... turn all metally, or I'm dangerous. Or I don't survive the transition. Which ever -- there's nothing I can do about that, and you know what? I've gotten rather _used_ to the idea that there isn't a lot I can do about the things in my life, but whatever. There isn't a whole lot that can be done -- but to see if I need to be ... blown up because I have a glitch." He shuddered violently. "I might even go -- _insane_! It took me three days before I could speak rationally about this!"

"Sam," Ratchet said firmly, bending over so that he could bring his face down to eye level. "Think about what you just said. It took you _three days_. It could have taken you years."

"I could be in shock, o-or denial," he said defensively.

"That is possible," Ratchet said thoughtfully, "in which case we should take full advantage of your false calm."

Sam stared. With friends like the Autobots, who needed Megatron?

-+-

Doctor Carolyn Peturi was not, as her last name implied, an implant from India. She was in fact a brunette and fairly pale and a bit of a babe, who promptly informed him that her last name was actually due to her ex-husband. Sam didn't know what he was thinking was so obvious, though it wouldn't be the first time he somehow managed to betray himself.

"So you're our cyborg?" was the second thing she said to him, to which he replied, "Er, ah," while Bumblebee clicked his disapproval in the background. He was apparently shy and was pretending to be a car at the moment, which was bizarre for an Autobot who had done a _shadowboxing_ routine when introduced formally to two teens while playing a bragging tune. The more Sam saw of Bumblebee, the more he got that maybe so many eons of fighting made Bumblebee slightly awkward around people he didn't know well who weren't enemies. He was a bit like the hyperactive guy that wanted to be everyone's friend and didn't know how to do it ... which Sam empathized with.

"Sorry," she said, flushing a little, "Usually my patients aren't ... um, conscious."

He made a noncommittal noise and looked to Ratchet a little desperately for help.

About a half an hour later, Sam was laying on his stomach without a shirt. There had been a bit of difficulty trying to rig up a small table for the surgeon to work around him on, since they needed him to keep his spine as straight and relaxed as possible, but luckily Ratchet had already prepared a room ahead of time, sterilizing it and having already filtered the air for particles. No one liked particles in their inner parts, not even Autobots.

Which left Sam with the dubious pleasure of taking a decontaminating shower, then getting some weird blue sheet that was supposed to prevent particles from the rest of him from dislodging and contaminating the area draped over him (or, at least that was the excuse). At least he didn't have to dress up the way Doctor Peturi did, who was doing a good impression of a blue mummy.

"Why is all this ... surgical paper ... cloth ... material thing blue?" he wondered as he tried to ignore her swabbing down a wide section of his back, between his shoulder blades. He was a little nervous, since he only had Ratchet and his doctor friend in the room. Bumblebee hadn't been allowed in, although_ why_ ...

"Because it's calming?" she theorized, obviously distracted with what she was doing. "Alright, now I'm going apply the numbing agent, so this might feel a little weird. You may feel your skin tingling a little, but that should stop. Since we can't do an epidural, I'm going to prick you lightly with a needle to make sure that the numbing effect has taken hold. Your --" a humored tone entered her voice, "-- butt may go numb, possibly accompanied by peripheral pins-and-needles ... that is, your ears, fingers, or toes may feel like they're just getting blood flow back. We're not sure, considering the degree of conversion done to your circulatory system and the molecular composition of your dermal organ and nerve receptors."

"... what with the which now?" he asked weakly. He recognized the words ... sort of, but biology had never been his favorite subject. What was the circulatory system again?

She paused. "Don't worry about it," she said with a soothing voice, deepening it just slightly. "Everything's going to go just fine, Sam. You know, I have a son of my own. He's going to be nine pretty soon, I've been planning a Hot Wheels theme party for him."

"Isn't he a little old for that?" Sam asked, a little bewildered by the nonsequitur. His skin was tingling all right. He wished she had warmed up the pain killing gel, honestly.

"Is he?" she murmured. "Well -- I guess. What do you suggest?"

"That you -- I don't know, ask him?" he suggested. " ... my lower back is going numb."

"It's supposed to be," Peturi reassured him. "Have you ever tried asking a nine-year-old what he wants? It's impossible."

"Then ... give him a few choices," he said. "Tell him he has to chose one or the other."

"Maybe that's true," she agreed. "How do you feel?"

"Er ... numb?"

"Good. What do you think of this? I offer him a choice between a Hot Wheels party, or Pokemon."

"Ah ... you know, I don't know a lot about ... _nine year olds_, but I don't think either of those are a good idea. Maybe ... Harry Potter or something. I don't know, what video games does he like to play? That'd probably be a big hit, as long as his friends know he likes it. You know, a young boy's ego is _fragile_, you must treat it with care. For that matter ... always treat your son's dreams with care, too. Did you know my dad promised me a car if I got two thousand dollars and three A's, and then he made me think I was getting a _Porsche_? That's just cruel and unusual. Never do that, or ... like, the old Camaro you buy him will turn out to be a robot."

She laughed. "You, too, huh? Poor kid." Making a thoughtful noise she moved around a bit. "Harry Potter, huh? You know, I read those books. I'm not sure I want my son reading past the third book."

"Well, I wouldn't know," he said, "I mean ... _Harry Potter_. That's a little weird."

"To each their own," she advised. "Don't get on the nerves of the woman with a knife in her hand."

"Don't remind me. You could try Spongebob Squarepants. Well, anything he really watches religiously. Video games are a little different -- I hated Final Fantasy Seven, but I played that thing to the ground just trying to get all of the extra side quests done. That and the damned gold chocobo ..."

"And I thought _my_ fandom had strange terms."

" ... what?"

"Never mind, Sam," she advised. "Never mind. How does that feel?"

He was about to ask how _what_ felt when something ... really, _really_ weird happened. Yelping, his hands jerked spastically as he felt -- _something_. "Ah -- ah -- _stop touching that_!" he yowled, and she recoiled a few steps back. He wiggling on the table for a moment, craning his head around in an effort to see what was on his back -- but it was kinda hard to look between his shoulder blades. Obviously. So he settled for eyeballing the surgeon warily.

"Wow, he wasn't kidding about the healing ..." she arched an eyebrow and said, "was it good for you?"

"That's not funny," he said seriously. "And it _tickled_. In a really weird 'hands off' and not 'ha ha ha' way."

Ratchet clicked a little as he shifted. "Well, then your brain is definitely capable of picking up it's cues from the alloy ... though it sounds like it may be hypersensitive. If you object that strongly to Doctor Peturi touching the outside, you really aren't going to like it when this tower gets plugged in."

"Oh, no, no, no, no," he protested, trying to sit up until Peturi forced him down by the shoulder, mentioning stitches. "No," he insisted, scowling at Ratchet. "I don't want anyone touching that."

Ratchet scoffed. "If you think a _human_ touching that is sensitive, you _really_ won't like an Autobot touching it. Our alloy is _meant_ to communicate that way, though such energies, not like humans. If _I_ were to touch it, you might rip it out on accident, trying to get away. No, the location and frail nature of the implant will require a human to do it."

"Fun times," he said sarcastically, flinching when Peturi got too close to the socket. It was ... really weird. His back was numb, skin and muscle completely, but he could also ... sense her hands moving about as she closed up whatever wound she had created. It was like feeling the body heat of another person, only ... well, obviously, it wasn't heat he was feeling. Obviously, his human flesh wasn't able to receive whatever energy it was that the alloy could.

Through the entire short process of having Peturi handle the socket to plug into the PC tower, his face was a brilliant glowing red. It was three parts embarrassment, and two parts the sensations itself, because 'hands off' sort of tickling wasn't exactly the way his human body translated it. While the general idea of 'hands off' persisted, human body apparently had only one way of responding to something like that.

All in all, Sam was _not_ a happy teenage boy.

He was even less pleased when the cold Earth-metal jack was plugged into his back. It was -- utterly unnatural. That was really the only way of describing it he could think of ... that there was just something _wrong_. At least the distaste his Cybertronian part felt for it utterly killed any unwanted response his organic side felt ... and wow, that was the most messed up thought ever. He really _was_ some freak cyborg thing. Any moment now, he should be staggering around with ... okay, _blue_ optics, apparently, and droning about resistance and futility thereof.

Twitching slight at the really weird sensation tickling at the edge of his brain (like a draft up his spine, or an ice cube down a shirt), just under the unpleasant cold bite of the cold unliving-metal of the jack (which was a stupid thought, really, of course the metal was cold), he just focused on ... _other_ things. It didn't really matter what was happening to him (now or later or _inside_) because pretty soon he would be done with it and leave and maybe he could even go on a drive with Bumblebee because they honestly had no where to go and nothing holding them back. All he had to do was sit through this bit of unpleasantness first. It was a little like going to the dentist -- he settled back kept his mouth open, and tried not to freak out too badly when the people poking around made interested noises.

Kinda like the one that Ratchet was making.

"What does that mean?" Sam demanded.

"It means ..." he said slowly, "that it's very interesting."

"Well, no duh!" he said a little hysterically. "_Why_ is it interesting?"

"It appears that the program that is running your conversion is fairly complex. Enough that it has a sort of ... artificial intelligence."

"_Oh my God, I'm going to die!_"

Ratchet made a rude noise -- a scoff if Sam had ever heard one. After a little longer during which he made a few thoughtful clicks and Sam panicked some more, the medic decided to fill the humans in. "There will be no dying on my watch," he said. "I can't be certain whether or not this 'AI' is due to your brain or not ... Well, it's communicating, in either case. Unfortunately, it's using a very basic and archaic form of our language."

"So .. good? Bad?" he asked weakly.

"... not bad," Ratchet said. "All the inflections are easily recognizable. It's completely benign."

"... programs have an inflection?"

"Software is a branch of intelligence -- thought. You humans would call them 'thoughts', though it's not an accurate analogy."

"Wait -- so, I'm ... changing, or whatever, because of a _thought_?" Sam demanded. Why must Cybertronian concepts always hurt his head? Granted, the fact that they were _aliens_, with their own culture and a _completely_ different view on life and way of functioning ... well, it made sense that most of their languages wouldn't even be comparable. _But why must it hurt his head_?

Ratchet's one-man-band performance continued. "I said it wasn't a good, nor an accurate analogy. You would have to couple the meaning of 'thought' and 'program' together in order to arrive at anything slightly comparable. In either case, the inflection is largely the only thing I can translate. I recognize a few of the words ... Sam, the language the program is using hasn't been documented except the barest of indications under layers of rust. It's _ancient_."

" ... oh."

Ratchet absently shifted on his feet, making a thoughtful whirling noise. "Ah ha, there we go. Oh, hmm."

Sam cringed. "I don't like the sound of that."

"You don't like the sound of much," Ratchet said sourly. "I have schematics, to put it simply. Fortunately, that doesn't require word-language. It seems that our original deduction was correct: you were to become a minibot of the type we were discussing ... however ...."

He lowered his head and bounced it off the table a few times. It would have been better if the table were hard, because he was pretty sure brain damage might help the situation. "However ...?"

"Well, it does have a rudimentary intelligence. When we 'poked it', so to speak, it not only registered that it was discovered, but it actually sped up the process -- stealth wasn't an issue anymore. Well, we've 'poked' it again; I have two sets of schematics, one to a much larger shell, along with a formula that would theoretically make it possible for such a body to be built."

As if his brain wasn't hurting enough as it was. "_What_? How is that even _possible_!"

With a sigh, he complied. "Our planet had a much thicker atmosphere than Earth. In the lower levels, the atmosphere is so thick that humans would be rendered blind -- this is why we not only have scanners, but such a diverse variety of scanners. There isn't much light, and most of it isn't in Earth spectrum. To heal, we pull the elements out of our atmosphere, alter them for use, and attach it to our armor. Earth's thin atmosphere, while ideal for organics ... well, anyway, suspending you in the formula provided would be like simulating a 'healing bath' for us. There are limits to even that, of course. For example, you couldn't form into something as large as Prime -- or even myself. Converting _that_ much Earth minerals into Cybertronian alloy would be inconceivable."

Sam loved how he could hear the 'but' in that whole explanation, and knew that it wasn't as simple as that. Yeah, that was sarcasm. "But?" he asked, looking up with trepidation and resting his head against his hand.

Ratchet hem-hawed a bit. "You won't like it," he said.

"Tell me."

"The model type is equivalent to Arcee."

"_Hell no!_"

"I told you, you wouldn't like it."

"What's wrong with this Arcee?" Peturi asked, since Sam was too busy groaning into his arms about how badly his life sucked.

"Sam has a hard time accepting that our specie doesn't have gender. On Earth in English, Arcee has a feminine pronoun, since she belongs to a model type that is more streamline than hand-to-hand bots. To be honest, the correct pronoun for us doesn't exist in English, unless 'it' is used, but the negative connotation is not exactly appreciated." Ratchet whirl-clicked in that way that betrayed his research on the Internet. "This seems to be a common problem in most languages, unless they are completely gender neutral. In our language, 'he', 'she', nor 'it' are used to refer to a mech -- just their function class and name."

"Well, he is a teenaged boy," Peturi said, which was the most beautiful thing Sam had heard in a while.

"_Exactly_," he said, lifting his head to level a glower at Ratchet. "I have a gender! I was _raised_ to have a gender! Most people think boats and cars have genders! Usually _female_ genders! Turning into a freaking _robot_ is one thing, _turning into a femmebot is another_!"

" ... and by teenaged boy, I mean narrow-minded and too attached to his reproductive organs," Peturi finished, and never mind, Sam still hated her and her grabby hands.

"Femmebot?" Ratchet echoed, sounding scandalized. "Sam, you better not say that around Arcee or any other of her function class! _Femmebot_!"

Great. That must have been one aspect of their culture that Bumblebee never covered. "Is that like calling the steroid pumping body builder a little girl?"

"It is comparable," he confirmed. "Bumblebee never explained this to you?"

"No," he groaned.

"That useless ..." he grumbled a bit. "Never call one function class by another label. Ever. It's not a smart idea unless you _like_ being reduced to your base components."

"I will _never_ become fluent in giant alien robot at this rate," Sam muttered into the table. He was not looking forward to the unplugging process, even if it _would_ get that cold metal out of his socket.

"You're turning _into_ a giant alien robot thanks to a program download," Peturi said, arching an eyebrow. "I don't think you can _not_ become fluent."

"Sam will fit right in," Ratchet agreed blandly. "There are worse ones out there -- and many of my patients tend to be a lot less compliant than Sam has been."

"If you say so ..."

"Sam," Ratchet said, and handed a small plastic square over when he looked up. The teenager only took this reluctantly, then figured out that it was some kind of reworked Blackberry. "I've downloaded both set of schematics into this," he explained. "You do have a type of choice here. The program can only convert you into the Chase function class if we suspend you in the formula. Considering that you'll have to learn how to work a mechanical body, I _strongly_ suggest that you choose the smaller. As it is, you're free to go and think about this. Bumblebee is outside the door ... I swear that nuisance can't keep his sensors out of other people's business ..."

Sam snorted, tentatively getting up. His back was still numb, but according to Peturi, he was healed about as much as he could be. The disconnect was as unpleasant as he predicted, and the bandage they taped over the socket so it wouldn't get caught on things itched like _hell_. On his still-feeling bits of skin, actually, because the Cybertronian metal only registered the sensation of movement.

Which was better than his other options, but he wasn't terribly pleased, anyway.

The taped bandage around his ribs (binding an uncomfortable line under his arms and over his nonexistent-pecs, thankfully missing more sensitive skin) itched a constant reminder of what was on his back, as if the constant scratch of movement wasn't enough. Slipping his shirt on and with the savaged Blackberry in hand, he left Peturi and Ratchet to their discussion ... apparently Peturi wasn't going to let Ratchet run away this time, and Ratchet would like nothing but. Anyway, the point remained that Bumblebee was waiting outside for Sam, looking rather expectant and anxious. Sam waved the Blackberry at him and sighed gesturing expansively in a manner meant to show just how fucked the entire thing was. Bumblebee appeared to be more alarmed than reassured by this.

_Well, no duh, Sam_. His stomach twisted a little (not like it wasn't doing that all the time, anyway) as he remembered Ratchet scolding him about 'scaring the kid', and he added, "It's fine. How much do you know?"

"I asked Ratchet not to tell me anything," Bumblebee said, extending his hand.

Sam stared at it a little baffled for a moment before he realized that he'd seen Optimus do the same thing and obligingly moved to be picked up. Normally, his ego would have gotten in the way of this, but ..._ Jesus Christ_, he was tired. What did any of it mean anymore? Besides, he had swiftly discovered during the last few days that Bumblebee made a terrific placebo. He needed a placebo. "Alright," he said slowly. "Is there a _reason_ you asked not to be told?"

"I thought it would be best to allow you to chose what to share with me," Bumblebee said, looking down at him with one of those strange ineffable expressions.

"Oh," Sam said intelligently. "Ah -- well ..." He glanced about and then shielded his face against the sunlight as they went outside. "How come you never told me about this ... 'function class' thing?" he demanded, glaring cockeyed at the yellow Autobot.

Bumblebee looked vaguely startled, and paused, supposedly so that he could search his memory banks. "Sorry," he apologized sheepishly. "It's such a given that I didn't think of it ... how did it come up?"

"Ratchet started lecturing me about ..." he wiggled his hand ineffectually, then breathed a sigh of relief when they were safely back in their ... home hanger. Home? That was -- anyway. "... I don't think I ever got a real name for it ... I called Arcee a 'femmebot'." Bumblebee made a loud grinding clank and his face looked horrified. Sam winced. "That bad?"

"Sam ... promise me," Bumblebee said, a little strained sounding, "that you will _never_ call a mech by another function class."

"I promise!" he grumbled. "You know, this could all have been avoided if you had just given me a word for it instead of letting me make a fool of myself."

That earned a sassy chirp. Ass. Sam slid off his hand and glowered at the towering mech until he settled down where Sam took his rightful seat on a foot.

"Hmm," Bumblebee hummed. "Well, in Earth terms, you'd call Arcee's function class a 'Chasebot'."

"... " Sam looked up at him. "A what," he said flatly. To some extent, he had heard Ratchet say something about some 'chasebots', but he hadn't really _heard_ it. He had been trying to absorb other information at that time.

With a rumble of amusement, Bee obliged. "English is limiting. Arcee's function before the war would have been to deliver high priority messages -- she had to be quick enough to deliver them back and forth very swiftly, and nimble to avoid damage along the way. It takes specialized equipment to move at such a high rate of speed ... just like the flyers, their basic hardware is vastly different than the average Cybertronian, so their software is naturally different as well. Where as the Chasebots were satisfied with Elita-One negotiating peaceably with Optimus Prime, the flyers demanded a position of their own of equal power. Then they put Megatron in that position ..." he trailed off and Sam remained quiet while Bumblebee thought about it. "Anyway, since the war, it was found that Chasebots are some of the fastest mechs on land. They're very hard to escape, and very hard to catch. Therefore we can not call them 'pursuitbots', because truthfully, all of their functions are built for the chase -- whether they are doing the chasing, or are _being_ chased."

Sam thought about that for a long time. That sounded kind of like him, really ... running all the time. (Running away, but he'd never admit it.)

"Of course," Bumblebee added with that slightly familiar bragging tone, "I can catch most Chasebots, one way or another. Dirty cheating tricks tend to work."

He sounded so _very_ pleased with himself that Sam had to laugh. It was a lot like Miles saying he was smooth with the ladies. Belatedly, he checked to see if he had upset the mech, but Bumblebee just seemed serene with his little outburst of amusement. "Well," he said, turning over the Blackberry in his hands. "I have a ... socket now. Ratchet said that ... I have this, like, _program_ running the scene in here." He thumped his head gently with one finger. "It's ... trying to make me into a minibot or something like Arcee. A Chasebot, I guess. Ratchet has the schematics in this," he explained, waving the palm-sized thing again. He shuddered hard. "I hope to never, _never_ have to get plug into ever again. Ugh."

"Yeah, Earth metal is dead," Bumblebee said sympathetically. He reached out and curled a hand around Sam, and something that would have been so ... _weird_ not a week ago just seemed so natural, now. Then again, several days of being carelessly handled could do that to a human ... or whatever the hell he was. His hands tightened dangerously on the electronic in his hand and he made himself let go, sighing slightly and staring at his palm morosely.

(_Witwicky_ changed everything and everything changed _him_.)

In an instant.

-+-

"Can I see it?"

Sam looked up from the three dimensional display of what he thought of as 'V1', for 'version one' of the body he might end up in. It was the small one, and currently the one he was considering most ... though, to be honest, he couldn't completely disregard V2, either. Oh, sure, they kept trying to tell him it wasn't a 'femmebot', but he couldn't quite shake the thought ... but it was still large enough to turn into a car. How awesome was that? And if the other Cybertronians wouldn't think of him as female, then ... well, that wasn't really good enough, but it was better than nothing.

He and Bumblebee had gone outside into the sun while Sam tried to deal with one crisis after another. First he'd been worried about this ... whole ... _life_ thing, then his GED, then all the weird crap that had been going on and _now he found out he was turning into an alien!_ What the hell! And since he had figured out this whole ... weird ... empathetic thing he had going on (it was hard to _ignore_ that he was feeling completely alien sensations from the socket, after all, that had nothing to do with what _he_ was feeling ... contentment when he started having a panic attack, reassurance when he began to fear what was stealing his body, prideful pleasure when he was laughing).

Since then, he had taken to trying not to touch Bumblebee too much. It explained why he liked being around Bumblebee so much, especially when upset, but with the socket ... it led directly to his brain and completely overpowered him. Sam simply _couldn't_ be upset (and it reached that terrible part of him deep down inside that whispered that _they might not like it, it might make them sad, but they might not be on humanity's side_.)

"See what?" he asked.

Bumblebee shifted on his feet, but the curious humming far overpowered whatever discomfort noises he might be making. "The socket on your back."

Oh yeah, he was definitely a freak. "It's taped over," he said mildly, punching the scroll button so that he could see the additional pictures that Ratchet had made of V1, showing how the prototype would move and what parts would shift and what kind of weapons it'd have. Another plus for V2: it actually had weapons, instead of corkscrews. Yes, V1 had tons of neat little toys, and both came with a strange structure that Ratchet had yet to identify the purpose of in the arms and hand (apparently, like the similarities that showed both were the same 'bot, it was his 'signature weapon' ... though _what_ it was ...).

Bumblebee considered that for a moment. "I think I can reapply it ... Please, Sam?"

Sam jerked his gaze away from the scene, staring out at the surrounding dry powdery land with his lips tight. "Yeah," he said finally, because Bumblebee asked for _so little_. "Yeah, okay." Setting the Blackberry down on the concrete beside it, he pulled his shirt up to his neck and bared his back to Bumblebee. "Careful," he warned. "I feel just like you guys, apparently ... the Doctor wasn't exactly high on my favorite people list because I'm not used to ... feeling through energy fields."

"I'll be careful," he promised.

While the sound of sliding metal -- vaguely like scissors, but much less frightening -- carried on behind his back as Bumblebee presumably produced the equivalent of a corkscrew, Sam bent his mind to figuring out the advantages of taking one form over the other, but it was a little hard when ...

Well, what did he expect? He was a short-lived organic, the equivalent of an intelligent mayfly. Why _should_ the Autobots see him as anything but? Oh, sure, he saved the world and helped to protect their cube (or rather, ended up destroying it). It was a fun little trick for a smart dog, wasn't it? Really -- he was _organic_. Meat. He was _talking meat_. Talking _violent_ meat. Why shouldn't it take turning into one of them --

Okay, no, that wasn't terribly productive. He really wasn't getting anything done by getting worked up.

The tape pulled against his skin, but unlike some people whose fathers he knew, he didn't have hair between his shoulder blades, so the discomfit wasn't as bad as he knew it could be. Bumblebee finally got the bandage free of his back and studied the socket from a few different angles.

"This is really attached to you?" he asked.

Which was a really stupid question. It was pretty obvious it was attached to him. "To my spine," he said. "You know how my nervous system is metal? I have a program hiding out there, apparently, and it only speaks ... like, your equivalent to Latin. Ratchet downloaded some schematics from the program." Well, okay, he was repeating things that he'd already told Bumblebee, but he felt oddly naked and ... just _uncomfortable_. Being ogled.

Later, Sam wouldn't be able to recall what happened next. It was extremely possible that it happened too quickly, or overloaded his brain, so he wasn't even _aware_ when it happened. One moment, he was standing with his back to Bumblebee, shirt held up to his neck, and the next moment he was on the cement, the side of his head aching and his skin crawling while it felt like the inside of his head was one of those plasma lamps. Somehow, he _knew_ that only a few seconds had lapsed, but he didn't know what happened.

"Sam! Sam, are you okay?" Bumblebee demanded, hovering over him.

"I ... think so," he said groggily, pushing himself up. "What the hell happened?"

Bumblebee vibrated with distress. "I ... touched it?" he said slowly. "I'm sorry, Sam, I thought it would only be sensitive, I didn't know it was going to do that to you."

... _do what_? He ran a hand over his head, combing through his curls. It was long pass time to cut his hair, but ... he'd simply been worried about other things. "What happened?" he asked, sighing. Wasn't that his luck? When it rained, it poured.

"That ... was a bit like a jumpstart," Bumblebee said, calming down a little since he was sitting on his own. "We've built up a lot of energy since nothing exciting has happened recently. Normally, that wouldn't have happened. I had ... I thought it would be like _you_, having a human reaction, that it would be only a fraction as sensitive as one of us -- I didn't know you were hypersensitive, Sam, I'm _sorry_."

"It's okay," he reassured the mech, wobbling a little but still coherent enough to hear the genuine distress. "So, it was a bit like static electricity to you, but a hell of a lot more powerful for me. My brain feel tingly."

"Now you know why Ratchet thought that Ironhide should try a mild power surge."

"That 'mild' power surge ate my neighborhood's _power_."

"Well, it does make us sort of 'high'."

Sam would believe it. Not that he'd ever tried any, because Miles was so Anti-Drug that he was likely to _shoot_ someone who used drugs. He got to his feet, wobbled unsteadily, then made it back to his previous seat and picked up the Blackberry. The way his shirt kept hitting his socket was a bit like getting static blared into his ear periodically, but he didn't exactly trust Bumblebee near it anymore.

And -- he still had to figure out what was going to be his body for millennia to come. It was one thing being _born_ into a body and dealing with that. Sam knew what that was like -- he was human, after all. As far as he knew, the Autobots had also been put together without any decision of their own. Sam, though, had a choice, and if he made the _wrong_ one ...

Well, he had a while to figure it out. A few weeks, at least, because his body couldn't be largely organic before the major rework or he wouldn't survive it. Ratchet had included the most probable timeline for each body, and each called for most of his systems being self-sufficient so that he'd survive a few months of being in a coma.

_"Whatever tomorrow brings, I'll be there ... I'll be there,"_ the man crooned.

Sam looked over in mild surprise. Bumblebee had transformed without his notice, and now his door popped open, beckoning. "I don't know how good of an idea that is, Bee," he said tiredly.

_"I say 'don't ya know', you say you don't know, I say ... take me out!"_

"Right," he said dryly. He was pretty sure that a drive was _not_ going to make him feel better. "Bumblebee, you do know that I'm producing a field like you do? This isn't going to be like having the human me riding around."

The door just swung a little wider, demandingly. Rather like a child stomping his foot in that manner.

Sam sighed. Perhaps _that_ much hadn't changed with Bumblebee. He was still a well meaning if demanding giant alien robot, and he didn't like it when Sam was upset. It didn't seem to matter to Bumblebee _how_ weird Sam's body was ... and perhaps he could tell if Sam was really himself or not. With that weird empathy field thing. Perhaps later, Sam would even find out what Bumblebee _really_ thought of humans.

For now, though, they could drive.

* * *

- LOLZ, You see that Bee has taken pointers from humanity? "IT'S SHINY, I MUST TOUCH IT!"

- Dun worri gais! Peturi will disappear after this chapter. I just needed SUDDENLY SURGEON, so there she was. (She doesn't really have a kid, either, lolz). Later, you may assume she has **died**. At the hands of 'Cons. Make it as gruesome as you wish! (My vote was that they didn't even notice and stepped on her.)

- Sam's Denial -- IS EPIC. He comes around and acts normal by mentally relabeling his life 'The Twilight Zone' instead of 'Reality'. Instead of saying that "this is not happening", he says "everything is fake".

You may have noticed that Prime's concern about Sam's conversion, and part of Sam's reason for undergoing surgery are identical. 8B

- Mikaela seriously told Miles that Sam had gone on a sojourn to deal with a sudden sexual identity crisis. Miles decided he didn't want to know. (I am serious, this is canon to this story, no matter how lulzy it sounds.)

- As ALWAYS, **lots of lying, gaiz**! Perceptions and misconceptions abound. It is the funness that is life.


	10. We all Fall Down

**Chapter Ten: We all fall down  
**It was an All Spark fragment, made of some strange metal that wasn't even like what the Cybertronians were made of, but the power of the All Spark was gone. Extinguished.

-+-

Sam came to himself abruptly, without any sort of softening -- a lapse of awareness like the world hiccupped. He stumbled, having been in the middle of walking and froze, looking around. For one desperate instant, he wasn't sure if he was dreaming or not -- it was dark deep nighttime, the stars above and the orange and blue lights highlighted the street ... then he noted that houses were still lighted, he definitely wasn't holding the All Spark, and Bumblebee was in the driveway. He was outside his house, and tremendously upset without having much of an idea of _why_.

He remembered quite clearly the decision to go home and try to tell his parents about what was happening to him. (A person would think it would have filled him with dread, but he'd only been able ... to feel _numb_. That remembered dissonance, that _out of jointness_ that he'd been feeling when the government finally let him go home ... that feeling of disconnect, of wading through liquid dreams was what encouraged him to make such a decision.) He even remembered getting out of Bumblebee, and walking into his house ... sitting his parents down while he tried not to sway from vertigo --

And nothing. It was like a tape recorded over. And while a part of him thought with bewilderment of that Men in Black movie and the memory erasing pen-thing, that nuera-whatsit, he knew there was probably a better explanation. After all, he and Bumblebee had discussed Cybertronian dreams.

So, feeling a pounding sickness in his chest while his stomach tied itself in knots, he continued over to Bumblebee and slid into the seat. Nearly immediately, stifling comfort smothered him, and he stared out the window as Bumblebee pulled away. Pins and needles prickled across his body and his limbs were tense, and he was forced into stillness.

"Did you know," Sam said conversationally to Bumblebee, "That I can apparently lock my own memories?"

The Autobot rumbled worriedly under his hands, silent but for the expressive Cybertronian vibration. (Sam silently struggled against the choking calm and nearly tangible worry, but he _couldn't struggle hard enough_, and everything he might have felt, wanted to feel about what he could only assume happened in that house was strangled into submission by emotions _much louder_ than his own.)

"I mean," he added (and sounded plastic, fluorescent, _fake_ and _too bright_), "It's really weird. I know what the memory is about. I'm still upset. But I don't actually _remember_ what it was my parents said to me."

"Give them some time, Sam," Bumblebee said soothingly. "You're not taking it well, and you understand a lot more about what you're becoming than they do."

The breath went out of him slowly, and ever-so-delicately, he sagged back against the seat, letting his useless hands slip from the wheel. "I guess," he said noncommittally. He certainly couldn't blame his parents for not reacting well. After all, he had -- alien technology taking over his _brain_. He could _lock his own memories as if it were nothing but a filing cabinet!_ He didn't even know he could do that until he wanted to forget it so badly that he'd physically _hurt_.

"You should have waited a few days."

He probably should have, but it wasn't what he needed to be told. A drive _hadn't_ cheered him up, but it had brought some measure of calm to him. Then he'd focused on who else knew, and figured that he could really do with a hug from his mother. Sam might not remember what happen at the moment, but he definitely knew that there hadn't been _any_ hugging going on.

The night pressed in against the outside of the window -- which was odd, considering that night _wasn't real_, just an extension of the vacuum overhead. Shouldn't it be _pulling_ on the windows? Maybe the laws of physics had changed without him knowing (because he definitely felt as though here was being compressed from all sides and it had _nothing_ to do with a mood-changing drug named Bumblebee). "Today's been a busy day," he said mildly, thinking about it -- he _had_ just found out that he was going to ... turn freaking _metal_ this afternoon. What was _wrong_ with him, thinking that by any measure it was a good idea to go _tell his parents_!

(He had two weeks, approximately, before it was _over_. Then he'd slip into a coma and be _unaware_ until the change was complete _but he wasn't stupid enough to believe that it'd be _him_ waking up_.)

Looking down at his hands, they'd never seemed more frail (more breakable) but they weren't. Chernobyl flickered uselessly in his chest, feebly trying to power up but failing under the suffocating heft of _calm_. And he was tired (_exhausted, thwarted_ and _yanked around_ and _powerless_) and he just wanted to sleep ... but he was a little afraid to, at the same time, because _what if __**he**__ didn't wake up_?

Sam sort of thought that he'd probably be trying to restrain himself from throwing an epic fit if it weren't for the fact that he simply couldn't muster the outrage and anger (that he knew was inside him, but it couldn't escape) required. Considering how 'well' his parents took it, he couldn't wait to see how Mikaela took it. "What am I going to do about Miles?" he asked numbly, staring blankly at the yellow reflectors snapping by. It was kind of hypnotizing.

"You could tell him you're moving away. Then you could still email him or take calls from him," Bumblebee suggested.

"That sounds good," he said. "I just hope he doesn't want to visit. And why would I move? No, it's a good idea, I just ... well, anyway."

After a moment of silence, the radio turned on and scanned through some channels, finally landing on a song that sounded a lot like something some kid would cut his arms to. _" ... that everyone was waiting on a cue to turn and run when all I needed was the truth,"_ the pop music whined.

"Hey, Bumblebee," he murmured, "Do you think I'd bleed blue?"

-+-

Things were looking better in the morning, despite the lack of sleep. (As a matter of fact, that probably helped him to dismiss the events of yesterday.) He was actually in a decent mood. Then he got to talk to Optimus Prime, which was of course exactly what he wanted to do seven hours after being disowned by his parents. Every time he tried to touch the memory, he always discovered that three seconds had passed, and he'd apparently locked the memory of remembering the memory he'd locked.

Yeah, it was kinda like one of those 'I know you know I know you know' things.

"Sam," Optimus said when he saw him, bending down to come closer to eye level ... as if fifteen feet up was eye level. "There is something I need you to do for me."

Which, was, like ... _not_ the way a person gets talked into things. "Last time I did something for you, I got _kidnapped_, you destroyed my parent's garden, and then I got knocked off a _building_. And _now_ look where I am!" he finished, a little hysterically, waving his arms and gesturing and all. He was _calm_, dammit!

"It's Jazz," he said.

"Oh," he said stupidly. "Wait, what? What about Jazz? I thought Jazz was dead?"

"It will take more than being pulled to pieces to kill us," Optimus said. Even with Sam's new understanding of the expressions and the sounds that were Cybertronian equivalents, Optimus seemed just as distant and ... well, he reminded Sam of this story he read for English class, in which the father was just as distant and ... uncaring wasn't exactly the right word, but it was disturbingly close. "But when damaged severely enough, we go into a sort of stasis ... a coma, if you will. I believe that with your help, we may be able to bring Jazz online."

Sam stared. "How in the hell am I supposed to be able to help?"

"The _program_, Sam," Optimus said, then extended his hand. "Climb on."

It seemed like a _really_ bad idea. He didn't know what was expected of him, but he was certain nothing good came of it. Yet he still felt compelled to try, because ... well, it was bad enough when a human was in a coma, but how must these long-lived sentients feel when one of their own was alive but unresponsive? An eternity of that ...

So he climbed onto Optimus Prime's hand.

Inertia was amazing, as was being grasped in the hand of a being large enough to step on a human without even noticing. Sam felt a bit like Jack and the Beanstalk. He held onto one of Optimus' giant fingers just for security as the huge robot began walking, presumably taking him where Jazz's slumbering body was.

"Are you sure this is a good idea?" he asked, looking up at the face far above him. Unlike Ratchet, Optimus was carrying him at waist level.

"What is your concern, Sam?" Optimus inquired.

Sam had a feeling that he wasn't used to having people like Sam question his decisions, but the fact remained that Sam hadn't been compliant, and even if he was going to be ... basically one of Optimus' soldiers, Sam didn't plan on _stopping_ anytime soon. Any military leader who thought suicide was the answer deserved to be questioned, frequently and often.

"I mean, he got _ripped apart_. That's going to do things to a guy's mind, you know. I doubt he'll be thrilled."

"Jazz is an Autobot," Optimus said. "We have been fighting for a very long time. Not we as a people, though this is also true, but we as in ourselves, Ironhide and Bumblebee and myself."

"Maybe there's a reason he hasn't woken up yet," Sam said darkly.

"Perhaps that is true. However, we need Jazz."

Which was the end of that argument. Optimus took him to a section of the base that Sam hadn't been into previously, and into a room that was disturbingly similar to the med bay. "Shouldn't Ratchet be here?" Sam questioned as he was sat on the table by the bulky bot. Jazz loomed pale in the darkness, oddly ... like a silver skeleton, or a solid ghost. He seemed strangely smaller than Bumblebee, if much, much wider, especially in the chest area. Sam bit his lip as he cautiously moved across the table (it was some twelve feet high, but of course it was sturdy). He reached out tentatively and set his hand against the alloy armor, almost expecting it to be cold -- but it wasn't. It wasn't warm either, but strangely a middling temperature, as if it didn't exist under his hands if it weren't solid to keep him from falling through the illusion.

And under that solidness, just _barely_, he thought he might be able to sense that the metal wasn't what Bumblebee called 'dead metal'. Earth-metal had no _life_ to it, but he could _feel_ the difference ... Jazz was in there, somewhere.

It must be very disturbing to be among lumbered dead monsters.

"What do you expect me to do?" he asked, dropping his hand and turning to Optimus. "I mean, I ... _fe_-- ... well, I don't know why you think I'll be able to do anything."

A great deal of air moved inside Optimus Prime. It wasn't a sigh, but it was strangely like saying he'd come to a decision. Optimus extended his arm again, and Sam was a little confused until he saw what was on the Autobot's palm.

"All Spark," Sam breathed. He wordlessly reached out and picked the shard up with both hands, curling his fingers around it. This wasn't like the Earth-metal at all, or even the Autobots. It was -- it was living-notliving. It tickled through his palms and his arms and connected through his chest from one shoulder to the other. It wasn't living-but-it-was. (_It was his, he _knew _it. Hishishishis__**him**_.)

He wobbled slightly sideways, dazed as he felt it flicker by and through and over and _in_ his bodyawarenessmindself (_because it was a part of him, a piece of his body_). He settled, finally, against Jazz's unmoving body, hip and elbow resting against alloy armor.

Sam would never be sure what Optimus Prime's intention was when his large mechanical hand came in contact with his opposite shoulder. His brain did inform him that he lost nearly five minutes of time, and by the time he became aware of what was going on, there was a lot of clanking metal, his head was ringing, and it felt like he had cotton in his ears. He groaned a little, stirring, slowly coming back around to his body ... he was on his stomach, the partial shard of the All Spark grasped in hand and trapped under hip. Finally, he began to make sense of the moving colors in what he realized were his eyes, and analyzed the very strange image he was looking at, withdrawing one arm out from under him to begin the struggle to an upright position.

"Hey, little man," a gentle and vaguely familiar voice said as he twitched and moved. "Wait there, don't move. I called Ratchet, okay?" Optimus Prime was collapsed on the ground like a puppet, and the comparatively tiny bot Jazz was hovering over him but looking at Sam. During the time he had -- blacked out (another power surge? It made sense that an influx of energy would make his electronic brain hiccup, wouldn't it ...), Jazz must have sat up and been alarmed to find his leader offline and sprawled on the ground. He got props for moving without injuring Sam, who must have collapsed right next to him.

"Ratchet's gonna be _so_ pissed," Sam groaned, but insisted on moving. Clutching the fragment of All Spark to his chest with one possessive arm, he used the other to lever him up, even though he felt sparks of almost-pain flare up his arm from the palm bracing him up. His head hurt _so_ badly.

"Listen, if you're gonna insist on being up and 'bout," Jazz said roughly, clearly disoriented, "then you can fill me in on what the hell is going on here!"

A panicking robot well over ten feet tall was not something Sam cared to be around. "Snafu, Jazz," he said groggily. "That's what's going on. You were in a coma."

An irritated clicking. "The battle? The All Spark?"

"Three months ago," he said, wrapping his jacket covered arms around the fragment. "Destroyed. Megatron and I think everyone but for Starscream, Barricade, and Frenzy have been dumped at the bottom of one of our trenches."

"Man," Jazz said, creating a soft song of surprise, sorrow, and victory. He was the most _musical_ bot with his 'expressions' that Sam had the 'pleasure' of hearing. It wasn't just ... _musical_, it was _harmonic_, half a song without words.

"You're telling me," he said, still a little disoriented himself, but empathizing with suddenly waking up to having found that everything changed.

That was about when Bumblebee and Ratchet showed up, bursting into the hanger like two rabid hell hounds. Ratchet paused by the door to take in the scene while Bumblebee made a straight line for Sam, making an agitated grinding-humming combination. Before he'd even finished the journey, Ratchet added _his_ expression to the already noisy room -- and was by far the _loudest_, more _furious_ mech in the room. Sam definitively didn't need to be fluent in Giant Alien Robot to know that the greenish-yellow mech was _pissed off_. Amusingly, everyone in the room immediately cowered, Bumblebee hesitating before deciding that retreat was the best decision and finishing the journey to Sam's side posthaste, snatching him up a little too quickly and clutching him to the bumper as he began to edge away to put the table between them and Ratchet. The medic paid them no real mind, storming toward Jazz and Prime while remarkably resembling a Decepticon. If Sam hadn't been currently clinging to his guardian who didn't seem to have any plans to let him go, he might have tried a repeat of Mission City, All Spark clutched to his chest just the same.

Jazz decided that survival was more important than valor, saw that Bumblebee had a plan, and threw in his lot with them ... abandoning his unconscious leader to the 'tender' mercies of their resident medic. Satisfied with this costly and personal sacrifice, the angry steel god stop to evaluate his offering ... okay, that might have been rather melodramatic, but it was _several tons and twenty feet of angry robot_. It was pretty damn scary, even if he _was_ on the good side.

Ratchet made furious grumbling noises as he checked over Prime, and Bumblebee and Jazz decided to try to make a sneaky break for it. They might have succeeded if not for Sam, because as soon as Ratchet was sure that Prime was fine, he immediately came looking for Sam. While still sounding like a very angry, very _big_ chainsaw.

"No! No, no-no-no-no!" Sam yelped, and hugging the All Spark shard close to his chest, he began trying to climb over Bumblebee to escape. This was unfortunately like a cat when faced with a dog, and he distracted Bumblebee from any escape route and ended up getting plucked off the smaller yellow mech. "Help!" he cried mournfully, clinging to his piece of All Spark. Past Ratchet's fingers, he saw Bumblebee shrug helplessly. _Jerk_.

"Now," Ratchet said, setting him back down on the table only to whip around and point threateningly at Jazz, who started and slunk sheepishly away from the door and back to the table. "_What_ just happened here?"

"Er," Sam said, looking at Jazz.

"Ah," Jazz added helpfully.

"Hmm."

"Yeah."

"Ask him," they told the medic, pointing at each other. Noticing this, they quickly redirected their fingers toward the unconscious Prime.

Ratchet made a very loud, very _intimidating_ noise. It was about that time that he noticed what Sam was clutching and reached out -- only for Sam to jerk back, gripping the shard tightly. Ratchet gave up on that quickly enough, but turned around to give Prime a very poisonous look. Shaking his head, he turned back and began scanning Sam -- made some more furious noises, and lapsed into unintelligible spit-cracklings. Sam was very certain that this was their spoken language, because only moments into his rant, both Jazz and Bumblebee reacted, almost protestingly, making the exact same noises.

Sam took this moment to tuck the shard of All Spark into the waistband of his pants. It was _his_, dammit -- he'd earned it. It was dead, anyway (dead-notdead). Living metal but not in the way that the Autobots were, not in the way that the All Spark _should be_ (he knew, even though he hadn't known how to _feel_ that life when he'd held it months ago ... but his dreams told him well enough). It was an All Spark fragment, made of some strange metal that wasn't even like what the Cybertronians were made of, but the power of the All Spark was gone. Extinguished.

(Or hiding.)

Ratchet made another dissatisfied noise, calling Sam's attention back to him. "Off with the shirts," he demanded.

"What!" Sam squawked, looking around at the aliens surrounding him. The table was about just the right height for Bumblebee and Jazz to lean against it comfortably, while Ratchet's head was still about eight feet above it. He got a bad flashback to some of the more questionable alien movies and got very nervous.

"I think you will want to see this," Ratchet said grimly. "Take off your shirts."

Reluctantly, Sam unzipped his sweater and shucked it off before grasping the bottom of his shirts and pulling them off. It was when he was moving to set them aside that he realized ... that something ... was _very_ wrong with him. His stomach began to do jumping jacks as he slowly brought his face around to look at his right side, which was most prominently affected. Streaking up and down in starbursts and jagged random branches, from his shoulder to half way down his forearm, were malleable streaks of metal, like wires melted perfectly to his skin. It branched up his waist from his right hip, and out of the corner of his eye, he could see how it broke out across his left shoulder, reaching for his neck. With a violent shudder, he jerked his head away and stared fixedly at the wall, like a child afraid of a shot.

(_Breathe_, he reminded himself -- in, out, in out.)

Ratchet made a resigned noise. "I know what Prime was trying to do ... with a dose of All Spark radiation, like that you were producing, Jazz would wake up from his 'coma'. When we disconnected the All Spark from our world, Cybertron ... we lost out immediate connection with it. But it's still built into our codes that the All Spark means that everything is working fine. Unfortunately, while you had the necessary radiation, you didn't have the _power_. It appears that you actually ... took power from Prime. These structures," he said, using one finger to trace a line from his shoulder to his other arm and down to his hips in the air, "are not part of Cybertronian physiology. They're like ... cancerous growths -- completely benign, however. Yes, these grew because of the excess of power, but they saved your life ... alloy conduits that prevented your other organs from being overloaded."

Sam swallowed, his mouth dry. "I ... um, okay?"

"I'm sure Prime didn't _mean_ for that to happen," Ratchet snorted. "But you've knocked him out real good ... it'll take a few hours for his Spark to recover and build up enough of a charge to bring him out of it. However, this has significantly altered the timeline I drew up for you. While benign, and having saved your organs from being _incinerated_, these structures also inhibit your functions." Ratchet shook his head again. "You only used to have two weeks, Sam. Now you only have one."

"Wait-- wait," Jazz said. "You mean the little guy is going to become one of _us_?"

"You did read the information I sent you, didn't you?" Ratchet snapped, glowering at the silver mech.

Jazz held up his hands, spinning them slightly in a bastardized version of a warding gesture. "Of course I did, Ratch. It's just -- _what_?"

"That's what I'd like to know," Sam croaked. "Unfortunately, there doesn't seem to be a real good answer."

Except that he had his suspicions. First that -- that energy, that _program,_ that _thought_ played hide-and-seek with S7, then oh-so-cleverly began to change his body -- he had the sneaking suspicion, now, that his dreams hadn't been _psychosomatic_. He reached down and touched the shard of All Spark, getting a relay tang of _it was him_, and looked down to stare at his hands. At first glance, they looked merely shiny ... but closer inspection revealed that they were riddled with hair-fine silver wires, identical to the jagged lines and starburst patterns on his limbs. For something that could download a crude base program and information into a biological along the nerves from fingertips to spine and imprint it onto the brain as if it belonged, like instincts ... for something like that, creating wires to preserve it's new _oh so accommodating_ vessel was hardly amazing.

Because Sam didn't believe that what was in him was only a program written in an ancient language. Clutching the All Spark fragment in hand, he _knew_ that it was more than just a stupid program working blindly. The All Spark was inside him, in a way. A part of it was, not the whole part. _What_ the All Spark was ... that was a question that he didn't have an answer for, yet. But something of it remained within him, and it was changing him.

It must be a little sentient, if not _sapient_. Or maybe it was -- or maybe it was _alien_, without human words to explain it's level of intelligence and wisdom. It certainly had known how to change him while preserving his intelligence, and he wasn't sure if he could blame his silence on denial or if it was a self-defense move on the program's part.

(_And the All Spark fragment was his_. Simply because it _was_ him. )

Oh, God. Even if _he_ woke up, he already wasn't _Sam Witwicky_.

"Can I put a shirt on?" he asked thinly, tugging restlessly at the tape stretched across his chest. Just like the socket, those millions of fine wires registered the vibration of the rough medical tape under his fingertips, sending little ricocheting signals to his brain.

Once Sam was clothed and back within Bumblebee's grip, Ratchet called Ironhide in and the three unhampered mechs got Prime up on the table that Jazz once occupied. He couldn't pay much attention to _that_, because the exposed metal was _exactly_ like the socket, and Bumblebee had to be utterly silent (no calming reassurance, no subsonic humming) because otherwise Sam felt like something was splitting his head _in half_. But without that empathetic puddle to drown in, Sam could set his metal riddled hands on yellow armor and take comfort anyway, without the repulsive feeling of being _stifled_.

He sincerely hoped that Prime never asked him for a favor. Ever again.

-+-

Reviving mechs out of a coma was hard work, and it didn't help Sam's always-ravenous appetite at all. He was wolfing down lunch at the speed only a savage would use, but it was damned satisfying. It was -- it was _weird_ to have those stupid rubber surgical gloves on his hands (but as long as he couldn't see it ...). Well, the surgical gloves were honestly not the strangest part of his attire. The strangest part was the strange harness-like thing that Peturi had rigged up to protect the socket still hanging from his back by the wires actually in contact with his spine -- _urgh_.

But, at least he got to keep the All Spark shard. It was only a vessel, and empty and useless. They had bled out the All Spark radiation from Sam through it and the power surge, but the fragment was nothing more than an alien hunk of living-notliving metal, and apparently they were prepared to let Sam keep it. Which he did, whether they were humoring him or not (_because it was a _part_ of him, of the thing inside him_). The only thing in the harness's favor was that the way it latched in front allowed him to strap in the shard and keep it close. (It gave him something to focus on.)

In between that, though, he had noticed that it was nearly _painful_ to touch the 'dead' Earth metal. When he expressed his disbelief to the Autobots that they continued to use it, he found out that it was another side effect of his hypersensitivity. While it was so easy to lock his memories that he could do it unintentionally, that was because humans did something similar when they forced themselves to forget about or ignore something. However, there was no analogous function dealing with adjusting skin sensitivity _except_ to become desensitized, so his alloy was blaring everything at full blast until that point. Luckily, according to Ratchet, when he woke up from his ... metamorphosis ... type thing, he'd have a chance to start over. In other words, he wouldn't go through an adjustment stage.

Well. That was _one_ thing he didn't have to worry about -- sarcasm, sarcasm. Excuse Sam for wandering off to sulk.

At least the Autobots had seemed pleased enough with Jazz being up and running ... though how Jazz felt was a question that went unasked and unanswered. The moment that Bumblebee had been distracted with greeting Jazz back to the land of the living, Sam had made a _break for it_, just wanting to be alone for a while. He had gone to the effort of locating the Blackberry again, but the main thing he had been focused on was lunch. Food was great. He loved food. It didn't hurt that he was looking forward to an absolute _lack_ of food soon, in the future.

He irritably thought that just about the time he'd like to experience the things he wouldn't be able to as a robot, he _couldn't_ -- the hypersensitive metal barraged his brain with sensations that he had to train himself to reject (it's too hot, it's too cold, the _scritch-scratch_ of his softest tee shirt like steel wool). Not to mention, it was _obvious_, as if someone had spat silver paint at him (but not even like that, it was too obvious from looking that it had surfaced from beneath his skin, because when he looked too closely, he could see dark lines under his skin, like veins of poison lead).

"I'm going to die a _virgin_," he said flatly, just to hear it out loud, and tilted his head back to 'drown his sorrows' in bottled water. His voice fell strangely flat in the air, but it had vibrated nicely in his throat.

The absolutely only bright side of this was that the moment Optimus was online, Ratchet was all over him, performing 'routine maintenance' rather roughly. Even Sam was wincing by the end of it, and he hadn't even been there. Jazz had been helpful enough to bring him a copy of the interaction, having learned from Bumblebee that Sam was too accommodating to invoke Hatchet-ful rage. He even informed Sam that this was how the Hatchet operated when it came to Optimus, since he couldn't knock him over the head a few times in retaliation. Of all of the Autobots, only Ratchet seemed to realize that maybe turning into a Cybertronian wasn't 'happy fun times' for Sam. Or maybe he was just upset because changing what appeared to be the natural progression was potentially dangerous. In either case, he was furious that Optimus had manipulated Sam into waking up Jazz, even though Sam protested that he would have helped if he had been aware of the situation earlier.

And while this was perfectly true and not a lie, thank you very much -- he was still pretty pissed about the results.

"Sam?"

He looked up to see Bumblebee approaching. The Autobots could be amazingly quiet when they wanted to be, so long as no one stepped on fountains. "Yeah, Bumblebee?"

"I thought I would join you."

"Thanks." He folded his arms over his knees while Bumblebee found a comfortable position to put himself lower on the ground.

"You've been carrying that around," Bumblebee said, pointing out the Blackberry sitting on the ground next to him.

"Hm? Oh -- when Ratchet hooked me up, he got actual specific schematics and loaded it onto this. I still haven't figured out which one I want ... you know, to either be little Swiss-army bot, or a Chasebot. On one hand -- well, it's big enough to be a car. Who doesn't want to be a car? And it's got weapons. I don't plan on doing a lot of fighting, but I don't want to be helpless. Being a six-foot tall robot is scary to people, but guys like the Decepticons would probably _laugh_. Actually, they probably wouldn't bother _laughing_, they'd just step on me. Ratchet isn't sure that the small version will be able to make up for the mass difference to take the shape of a motorcycle, and then I'll _still_ have to learn to balance. If something goes wrong, I think that the larger bot will be able to hit the ground running. I know how to drive a car, after all."

"Driving yourself is much different from what I understand driving a car would be," Bumblebee said dryly. "... but overall, you might be right. May I see?"

He regarded the mech suspiciously. "_Last_ time I let you see something, I ended up ... taking a _nose dive_."

That invoked a discomforted murmur from inside Bumblebee somewhere, and he had the grace to look sheepish. "I _am_ sorry about that, Sam. However, downloading information should have no ill effect on you."

Well, probably not. "Sure," he said, picking it up and holding it out. Bumblebee waved it away, and Sam stared in bemusement before the screen flickered. He looked at it in alarm, then realized that Bumblebee had connected to it wirelessly. After a moment, the hidden parts of Bumblebee whirled thoughtfully. Sam cradled the Blackberry between his hands and began to flip through the pictures again. "What do you think I should do?"

Bumblebee whirled for a moment longer before he stopped and reached out, curling one of his giant metal hands loosely around Sam's shoulders. He must be controlling himself, or ... doing the best he could to be neutral, because Sam couldn't' feel anything other than the touch ... no enforced emotions at all. "I can't make this decision for you," he said. "You're going to become one of us, and we live for a very long time. Make sure it isn't a decision you regret."

"Oh, like _you've_ never made a decision you regret," Sam said. "You know what? I wanna know if you were irreversibly turning into one of _us_, and you had the decision between a guy like me, or a girl like Mikaela, which would you become?"

Bumblebee whirled and clicked and made a few distressed noises, then ten minutes later, said: "I'll get back to you on that."

"Welcome to my world, buddy."

-+-

"Ratchet, can I ask some questions?"

"If they are about your pending choice, of course."

"You know how humans have things like ... racism, and sexism and xenophobia? Do ... Cybertronians have things like that? Like ... are particular models stereotyped or looked down on?"

A mechanical noise. "You shouldn't let our perceptions of ourselves affect your decision."

"But I have to deal with it, right? I mean, like we think of Arcee as a woman ... I should look at it from all angles, right? And I'm going to be living this for a long time ..."

" ... well, alright. Hmm. Well, I've already given you the history of Chasebots, so I guess I should start with the model history of minibots ..."

"How do you _know_ this stuff?"

"It's part of a culture download, Sam. Now, if you're finished? Good. Minibots were originally created to take care of our planet. Much like us, Cybertron is a sort of organic machine ... though if there is any Spark or awareness to it, it has withdrawn and is in stasis. Because of everything being complex machinery that can't be replaced completely by self repair systems, we had to craft smaller workers. That's why I made that comparison with army knife. Sometimes minibots aren't seen for many of our days, inside some small space inside our cities and towers, or the planet itself, repairing it. Obviously, this requires a wide array of tools.

"Of course, just because we were built for a purpose and fitted with programing doesn't always mean a lot. That slagger Starscream, for one, is doing what he was built to do, but he also has a strong interest in science. That's not too unusual, since flyers were made to be adventurous and to surpass obstacles ... but he's into lab work, which really isn't. There's too much patience and sitting around in lab work for your average flyer. There are medics who don't want to weld and warriors who would rather reflect on philosophy. It takes all kinds. Programming is only in the hardware, which is suited for the model we are -- but software is made by us, automatically, when we're first activated. Sometimes there are conflicts, of course ... someone built to be a medic but with the spark of a warrior is going to have a hard time.

"So it's not unexpected when you run across a model that seems odd to their job. The only problem is that minibots are made so self-sufficient and their hardwiring is so bare-bones that they're a bit like people -- they do whatever they particularly feel like it. As our culture grew, so did the feeling that anyone could do anything ... and minibots leapt at it. So these days, minibots have a reputation for being opportunistic, flighty, wishy-washy flip floppers."

" ... wow."

"Hmn. It's not a particularly true sentiment, and when it is, it's usually _because_ of that point of view. They're suspicious and unwilling to commit to much because they know that they're seen as disposable."

"And I should want to become this ... why?"

"Because you would retain a more familiar shape, and even possibly still pass as human, with a lot of dedicated practice. Plus, it would make it easier for you to hide -- that is, you're accustomed to hiding a body under six feet of height in a world made for beings of that size, while the Decepticons can only do a passable impression of 'Godzilla'. Besides, we'll know who you are, so your shape won't mean much."

"Ah. And, um, these chasebots?"

"Notoriously high-strung, highly competitive, and prone to overreacting."

"Well, that doesn't sound like me at all. ... what? Why are you -- no. _No_, you are _not_ trying to say that I'm 'high-strung', o-or _competitive_, or prone to overreacting!"

A rumbling noise and a 'who, me?' expression. "Anyway, that's mostly bad press in both cases, and due to hardware as well ... naturally, someone _hardwired_ to do many things _will_, and someone hardwired to move at high speeds _is_ going to be prone to snap-decisions and quick reactions that would save their afts during a chase." An inelegant shrug. "You've met Arcee -- and Elita-One is a very even tempered mech, and just as protective as any."

"A -- okay ..." A long pause, then: "What are we going to tell the other Autobots? When one of you just shows up out of nowhere? I mean, I'm not going to be able to act like one of you, anyway, right?"

"It wouldn't be entirely inconceivable that no one had met you, Sam. I've already considered it, and I think that if you play the 'memory wipe' card, we can say that you've been crashed on Earth for several years without knowing who or what you were, until Bumblebee stumbled across you. Having your only memories be of Earth should explain any strange habits."

" ... I just happened to be on the planet that Megatron and the All Spark were on?"

"Life is stranger than fiction. Besides, many mechs were jettisoned inactivated into space. It's happened before."

"Oh. Wow, okay."

"Since you've brought that up, I would like to discuss with you some firewalls I would like to put in place now, so that when you wake up, you won't be overwhelmed or hurt yourself -- or others."

"Yeah, okay. Sure."

"I would also like to install them."

" ... goddamn it."

-+-

Sam leaned heavily on Bumblebee's horn, smirking slightly at the tingle of exasperated annoyance that danced across his skin. Apparently, Bumblebee had been making a hobby of studying him again, and had learned how _much_ charge to put off. Sam hadn't yet gotten around to asking about the science behind that, but that was mostly because ... he didn't care. Well, he'd probably care _later_, but for now he was satisfied with the idea that it was probably vibrations, especially if metal made it more obvious.

(Wait, weren't human cells made of water which was more conductive? Eh? Argh -- science had never been his strong point ...)

But he did figure that it must be another one of their communications thing. It was notably stronger the closer he was to Bumblebee's chest, and it definitely worked as well as a facial expression did, with the plus point of not straining his neck. Oh, sure, Ratchet and Ironhide had done a good job mimicking a recognizable human face, but it was obvious from Bumblebee and that ... headless glitch, Frenzy, and his evil cop buddy that they didn't necessarily come with the correct components.

No wonder they felt the need to design those moving metal masks so that they were more recognizable to humans. The more Sam found out about them, the more completely alien they were! Their language sounded like static, sometimes they clicked or chirped, and _sometimes_ those clicks or chirps were part of an expression of mood along with a dozen _other_ noises. Humans, who ... growled, laughed, or screamed, must seem particularly limited in expressions.

Finally, Miles appeared, shouting, "Alright, already! Sam, stop with the freakin' _horn_!"

He sat back, grinning at the blond as he approached the Camaro, flip-flops snapping with every step. "Hey," he said as Miles set the surf board against Bumblebee and shoved the body board and other things into the back seat. "_You're_ the one that suggested we go to the beach when I wanted to do something."

"Dude, get _off_ my back," Miles grumbled. "It was the only thing I could think of that'd get my mom to let me go. She's always saying I should get more sun --" he bent down and grinned, all bright white teeth and slightly predatory, "and I got to turn her words _against her_. Dude, what's up with the ... sleeves and gloves?"

"And she didn't whack you one?" Sam asked mildly.

"No. So?"

"Skin. I have a rash, like ... poison oak, you know? It gets worse with sun. Where in the hell are you going to put that board?"

Miles straightened until Sam could only see the front of his luridly colored Hawaiian shirt, but the thoughtful pose was impossible to mistake. "Well ... we could tie it to the back like a spoiler!"

"No!" Sam gasped out in horrified shock, imagining poor Bumblebee looking at the surf board tied to his aft with horrified bemusement. Okay, that was actually a little hilarious, but Sam knew better than to laugh at his best (non human) friend. Sam got to have two best friends on the virtue that they didn't share a species. And he was possibly inappropriately attached to one of them but he wasn't thinking-about-that-right-now-okayshuttingup.

"Well, then I'm out of ideas."

After a quick look at the Autobot symbol on Bumblebee's steering wheel, Sam opened the door and slid out, leaning against the car and eyeing the surf board with dissatisfaction. He was not going to let some ovaloid piece of fiberglass and wax disrupt a day at the California beach with the _only_ spot of normality in his life. As a matter of fact, he _refused_ to let anything ruin this reminder of simpler days.

"Dude, if you break my board, I will kill you. You're not allowed to eat it, either," Miles warned him.

Sam wiped the evil look off his face and blinked blankly at his best (human) friend for a moment. "The roof," he said.

"... is on fire? Do we need water?"

"No, I mean, we tie it --" gesturing uselessly for a moment as he tried to remember the word, "-- we tie it _length-wise_ to the roof. With the windows open."

" ... I like my spoiler idea better."

"The _roof_, Miles," he insisted. "I will sooner sideswipe a van or something and snap it in half."

"If you insist?"

"I do."

Miles sighed, flopping over the top of the car in a way that Sam was too short to mimic, "you, my friend, are _not_ fun."

" ... I have a fifth-gen _concept-body Camaro_, and I am _taking you to the beach_, no gas money required. And I'm _not fun_?"

"Sorry, bud. Not fun at all."

Sam mulled over that. Then he boosted himself up by stepping on the inside of the door just so that he could lean across the car and whap Miles on the head. "Shut up, Miles. _Before_ I change my mind and leave you to wash the dog in your little kiddie pool."

"Right. So, the roof."

"The roof indeed."

Thirty minutes, plenty of cussing, yelling, laughing, and tugging violently on those little bungee-cord tie-downs with metal hooks, the two teenaged boys then realized they had a problem. They both stared at the Camaro for a very long moment. Sam's socket (and his spine, and his _brain_) tingled with the vast amount of amusement the yellow mech in disguise was emitting like it was going out of style.

"What now, genius?" Miles demanded, looking across the car at Sam with his eyebrow arched in that ridiculously high way only old gray men tended to be able to do.

Sam squeeze his forefinger in between the bungee-cord and the roof of the car. While he couldn't _see_ it, wearing gloves as he was, he was sure it was turning red to attest to how tightly they had strapped the surf board to the roof. He pulled his hand out and shook it vigorously, frowning deeply at the cord that came in through the open window and very effectively keeping the door shut with the two of them on the outside. Then, refusing to look at Miles, he contorted his body uncomfortably and began to climb in through the window.

His friend was laughing hard enough to be in tears by the time Sam got himself situated. It probably had something to do with the way he had tumbled in and tangled in the various things inside the car, getting his leg caught around the steering wheel and ending up face-first in the passenger floorboard at some point. Even Bumblebee would have been laughing if he wasn't pretending to be an inanimate car at the time.

Once Sam was safely behind the steering wheel, Miles slid in with a lot less flailing around. Sam glared impetuously at his friend, who shrugged with a stupid grin and said, "That's what you get for giving up climbing trees in fifth grade."

"Miles. You have ADHD. I had to give up climbing trees because by the time we were in fifth grade, I couldn't _keep up_."

"All I hear is 'blah blah excuses blah'."

"Would you like to _walk_ to the beach?"

" ... so, maps, huh?"

"That's what I _thought_."

-+-

At least once a year, during summer break, Miles and Sam hit the beach. Of course, during the summer, the beaches were horrendously crowded, so they had become accustomed to hunting down the most abandoned stretch of beach they could. Generally, this meant that they usually ended up with the rougher, more torn up beaches, with more silt in the water, less waves, and debris ridden sand.

Being some of the lowest of the low in school cliques for as long as they could remember, Sam and Miles hardly cared. What did it matter what their 'play ground' looked like, if it gave them free reign and permission to do whatever silly thing they wanted? They just cleared off the beach drift wood and stray nets and the like so that they had plenty of room to 'camp out'.

Bumblebee was intensely interested in this strange human custom. Or at least that's the impression that Sam got when they unloaded his back seat and trooped down to the water-side. He didn't want to get salt and sand all in his gears, after all.

The cold sand-and-silt full water rushed around Sam's ankles as he wandered aimlessly along the edge, making sure not to go too far and getting his guardian or friend worked up. Miles was enjoying himself out in the waves with the foam body board, apparently getting into something of a nasty argument with the ocean. Only poor, crazy, ADHD Miles would try to argue with the ocean.

... maybe some of his weird craziness had rubbed off on Sam. He certainly tried to argue with Megatron, which was _sort of_ like that.

A small round disc caught Sam's attention, and he bent down to fish it out of the sand, using the salty water to rinse it off. Turning the part of a sand dollar over in his fingers he studied it for a moment and tucked it into his shorts pocket.

"Ow! Ow! Dammit, _something bit me_!"

"What?" Sam asked with mild interest, watching Miles flop around in the water, body board restricting his movements with that black vinyl tether around his wrist. "Is it a shark? That would be awesome."

"_No_, it's not a shark -- _ow, ow, ow!_ -- it's on my toe -- _ow, motherfucker_!"

"Miles, honestly."

"_I'd like to see you get your toe bit off and use soft language!_"

When Sam saw what was hanging off of Miles' foot and causing him to use one of the words that he _really_ objected to, he couldn't quite help but to laugh his ass off, eventually going to his knees and rolling around in the sand for a while. Miles continued to curse out the crab vehemently, shaking his foot while the poor palm-sized thing waved its other claw threateningly. Eventually, Sam managed to crawl over to save Miles from the Dreadful Claw.

"Hold still, Abominable Snowman," he instructed, then gave Miles a stern look as he promptly went into bad hospital show dramatics, flopping around in the sand as if he had seizures. In retaliation, he bent Miles' free toes in uncomfortable directions until he yelped for Uncle. "Tonight is not the night you go on someone's dinner plate," he said to the crab, using his thumbnail to force the claw open until it fell onto the sand. With a girly shriek, Miles rolled away and leapt to his feet, least the crab somehow find itself on his lap.

Sam, who so clearly wore the pants in their friendship, had to distract the crab with one hand, which it eagerly reached for, both claws wide open. In amusement, Miles started making kung-fu attack noises, like all the really bad martial arts movies had. "Mine?" Sam inquired obligingly before he grabbed the crab from behind and flung it into the ocean. "Go find Nemo!"

"No!" Miles wailed dramatically, charging into the water -- though no where near enough to find it again -- and reached dramatically for it. "I was going to take it home and name it George!"

He had to laugh at that, at least a little. But he was mostly exasperated, and so he did the only thing he could think of: he grabbed up a handful of wet sand and chunked it at the back of Miles' head. With an outraged squawk, the blond ruffled his hair, trying to get the sand out before he bent down and scooped up some _really_ wet sand and flung it back at Sam.

Of course, being really wet sand, even though he ducked, it still splattered him. "You're going down, Miles! _Down_!"

-+-

When it grew dark, they started a bonfire on the beach, and hosed off all the salt and sand that had accumulated in various unmentionable places. That and neither Sam nor Miles were terribly interested in getting sand or salt inside the Camaro.

"Next time we go to the beach, let's take my Mom's jalopy," Miles said.

Sam hesitated for a split second. In a week, he'd be comatose, being turned into a robot. Suddenly, the beach wasn't fun -- he wondered why he was here, on this beach with his _very_ ignorant friend with a giant space robot, while his spine was made of metal and he had a _socket hanging out of his back_. After a second, he realized that Miles was staring at him awkwardly, and he quickly turned away, hauling the bucket of water toward the bonfire just to have something to do.

He sat down heavily on the driftwood that they'd dragged closer to the fire, staring at the yellow-orange flames, just to get the after image so he couldn't see anything. As soon as Miles finished filling his bucket and lugged it over, he sat on another piece of drift wood, and for a long while it was quiet except for the sound of water and the crackle of the flames. Sam moodily jabbed the fire a few times with a driftwood stick, but Miles just sat there, staring at the blackened wood with a slightly puzzled frown on his face.

"There isn't going to be a next time, is there?" he said. It was a statement, phrased like a question. His inflection even rose on the 'is', as if he was asking, but it wasn't a question.

"No, Miles," Sam said soberly. "There isn't."

After another quiet moment, he asked, "are you sick? Is that why you're --" he waved his hands "--wearing sleeves and gloves and shit to the _beach_?"

"Not -- not exactly," he said carefully. "But ..."

"But what, dude?" Miles demanded. "You're not-exactly-sick but _what_?"

"But ... it's sort of ... terminal."

"You're dying."

Not exactly. Sam sighed and brushed a hand through his hair. "I just -- I found out a week ago, okay? I've got a week to go."

"_Fuck!_ Fuck, man," Miles swore, going from sitting to standing before Sam could blink. "What the _fuck_, are you _serious_?"

This was possibly the worst idea Sam had ever had. But what was he supposed to do? In a matter of days, _Sam Witwicky_ would disappear off the face of the Earth. His parents wanted nothing to do with it, Sam would ... _try_ to tell Mikaela tomorrow sometime, because at least _she_ would know what was really going on with him, and maybe (just maybe) she'd still talk to him when he woke up. If _he_ woke up. "Seriously, Miles," he sighed, rubbing at his neck and drawing his knees close. "I don't have a lot of choice, you know? So ... this is it."

"Were you even going to _tell me_?" Miles demanded, standing. He might have been glaring. Sam wasn't checking.

"Jesus Christ, Miles!" Sam burst out loudly. "You act like its _your_ life that's over!"

The ocean hissed, breeze and embers, the quiet crackle of the wood.

Uneasily, Sam shifted on the feet he hadn't even realize he'd risen to stand on. "I know this can't be great for you, okay?" he said, softly now. "I mean -- my parents are in total denial, I haven't even told Mikaela yet ..."

Tense and silent, Miles' face is as unreadable as Sam had _ever_ seen it. Finally, he looked away, shaking his head like he'd never stop, backing away from Sam and waving his arms. "Listen, I -- I have to _think_ about this ... _Jesus_."

"I'll be here," Sam said.

Long after he lost sight of Miles' pale hair in the gloom, Sam stood there -- and finally, snapped. Violently, he slung the bucket of water into the flickering flame, hot wood sizzling and smoke billowing up from the charred driftwood. In a vague continuation of the movement, he flung the bucket at the ocean and kicked at the sand.

For what was supposed to be a fun night out at the beach, one last time (_don't think about it_), it had sure ended in a really messed up way.

Turning away from the rushing sounds of the ocean, turning his back on the steady inward going wind, he stumbled and struggled through the sand and up the grassy reedy incline to the road, where Bumblebee was still sitting after all those hours, sparkling innocently under the cool moon light as if he were just an inanimate car. He sat down hard on the pavement, ignoring how the gravel bit into his skin and leaning his back against the bumper.

_Please make it better, please make it stop_.

After a while, the biting cold and darkness began to get to him, and he drew up his legs again, wrapping his arms around his knees. The alloy was warm against his back, vibrating slightly, and the socket that exposed him for a lie was warm (his spine was warm, and so was his brain, and a whole network of metal things he probably wouldn't have noticed otherwise: bones became struts and a warm burning center in his chest). Slowly, the tension bled from his frame, and he was blessedly numb.

It was only then that he caught the whisper of a song, and canted his head to turn an ear to it, exhaustedly curious what Bumblebee was up to now. Bumblebee was swift to note his attention, turning it up just a little higher. _"I feel the weight of the world, sometimes ... hanging on my head, whoa ... look for the light at the end of this tunnel once again. I'm talking 'bout the right state of -- the right state of -- the right state of your mind ..."_

"Not helping," he grumbled quietly, wiping his face against his shoulder.

After a small silence, another song started with a sharp pop of drums. It was a sort of strange jazzy almost _playful_ tune. Then the lyrics started. Sam listened with increasing befuddlement as the fairly depressing words snapped and rolled around the tune. _" -- I'm going out of my head, I feel like I'm dead; I'm feeling Lo-Fi. I'm bottled up -- and explode. My engine has gone; some things I can't hide: I'm feelin' Lo-Fi!"_

When it finally drew to a close, Sam craned his head around to give the Camaro an incredulous look. "Is that supposed to _help?_"

_" -- and all the girlies say I'm pretty fly for a white guy!"_

Sam scowled mulishly for a while longer before he grudgingly accepted that Bumblebee _had_ succeeded in cheering him up a little. After a while, he wandered around, gathering up everything that they'd brought to the beach. They hadn't even gotten around to getting the surfboard off of Bumblebee, since they had done a little _too_ good of a job tying it down. When Sam was sure that he had as much of the sand and salt off as humanly possible, he slid into the front seat and relaxed back against the familiar faux-leather, reaching up to pull the seat belt across his chest in a pseudo-hug (not that he'd ever, _ever_ admit it).

Bumblebee turned on some weird retro or ... or indie ... okay, Sam didn't know _what_ it was, but it wasn't rock or pop, so it must be something like retro or indie (retro was a music genre, right?). It was something playful and quirky, and sounded like it had been cut together out of a lot of sound clips, anyway. In a way, it was soothing, too.

-+-

The ride home was silent and tense, and neither fell asleep while the yellow lines slipped by. Wordlessly, Sam helped Miles unload the stuff and Miles disappeared back into the house without a goodbye. Sam watched the house go dark, then climbed back into Bumblebee and blew both his ego and pride to hell, curling up in the front seat and falling asleep within seconds.

-+-

The next morning, Sam woke up to a really ... really annoy vibration in his chest. He spent the next hour or so poking his own chest and grimacing. If he felt _very_ carefully, he could feel the useless beating of his heart, but he had no _pulse_. His ... did he even have blood?

That was enough to get him up and moving and searching (embarrassingly hysterical) for Ratchet. It was only _after_ speaking to the uncomfortable mech that Sam discovered that it was likely that the pump was the _second_ thing that had begun to form, after his central nervous system was safely biometal. No one bothered to tell him that he didn't really have ... blood as humans thought it, or that the pump would turn on randomly. Ratchet assured him that once the fluid the pump was working with became the proper consistency, it would stop vibrating.

Sam spent the next thirty minutes hanging over a sink and splashing water on his face.

For some reason, Sam seemed to have a masochistic streak, and whenever he was faced with terrible things, he went looking for _more_ terrible things. That _must_ have been why he asked Bumblebee to talk Arcee and Mikaela into going racing. He'd suddenly gotten the guts (or maybe he convinced himself it couldn't get any worse) to tell Mikaela that he was ... being ... _invaded_, being _taken over_, that he wasn't _human_, that he'd end up being one of the robot aliens they were friends with.

At least, that was what he intended. How were they supposed to know that the Decepticon power struggle was ready to spill upon the Autobots?

It happened too quick for humans to react. All Sam knew was that he was with Bumblebee, then he and Mikaela had gotten out to talk while Arcee and Bumblebee gave him some space ... Then both Autobots, both still in their alt modes, came racing toward them, commanding them to run and hide. There was something not unlike a sonic boom, a shadow overhead.

Then rushing air and the crackle of ribs and agony and white and wind, and when he finally got some sense of self, he grabbed ahold of what had him and _hated_. Then fire (_cold fire_) all through him (_through his bones_) and _down_. Down. No air, too fast, burning and (_cold fire_) and hot terror.

Then nothing. Nothing, and pain, and black.

* * *

- **Out Take** -

He regarded the mech suspiciously. "_Last_ time I let you see something, I ended up ... taking a _nose dive_."

That invoked a discomforted murmur from inside Bumblebee somewhere, and he had the grace to look sheepish. "I _am_ sorry about that, Sam. However, downloading information should have no ill effect on you."

Well, probably not. "Sure," he said, picking it up and holding it out. Bumblebee waved it away, and Sam stared in bemusement before the screen flickered. He looked at it in alarm, then realized that Bumblebee had connected to it wirelessly. After a moment, the hidden parts of Bumblebee whirled thoughtfully. Sam cradled the Blackberry between his hands and began to flip through the pictures again. "What do you think I should do?"

Bumblebee whirled for a moment longer before he stopped and reached out, curling one of his giant metal hands loosely around Sam's shoulders. For a moment, he only studied Sam intently, the brought around his other hand to grip him tightly. With an almost _desperate_, hopeful look, he said, "_Sam_, you must choose the femmebot. I've run out of racers to chase! _Please_!"

"_What the fuck!_"

-+-

Ratchet hesitated in the middle of putting away the tools that he used to waken Optimus Prime from his unconscious, power drained state. "I ..." he said, causing the other three mechs present to look at him curiously.

"You what?" Prime asked with clear befuddlement.

"Is someone making planetfall?" Ironhide mused, at a loss. When the unfortunate sun wasn't interfering with their main communications, arriving mechs could send out a pulse on the medic's channel. Ever since Ratchet had welded up Shockwave, no Decepticon had dared to abuse this custom for fear of what the logic worshipping mech would do to them. According to him, it simply made good sense not to alienate a medic who was technically Neutral and therefore not adverse to welding anyone who needed it.

Slowly, he withdrew the tool he had been about to put away and set it delicately on the table. With a strong air of confusion, he said, "I have a feeling I'll ... need these."

Jazz slowly raised his hand. "I'll go look for Bumblebee. Damn, man, I _told_ you to keep him away from the kid!"

* * *

- OMG FORESHADOWING BLINGBLING!

- Was Miles a bit of a jerk? Yes. Oh the other hand, all Miles knows is that since Summer, both of his friends (Sam and Mikaela) have been drifting away, and then Sam LETS SLIP that he's 'dying', and it sounds a lot like he wasn't even going to TELL Miles. Miles is in shock. He will feel like an ass and a DOUBLE ass when he finally processes what's going on.

- Songs, lolz ("State of Mind" - Mad Caddies), ("Lofi" - The Exies), ("Pretty Fly (For A White Guy)" - Offspring), and while there were no words or even a specific song intended, the weird music is the Wiseguys. (If you're familiar with any of their songs, it's probably "Start the Commotion")


	11. Bumblebee's Intermission

If the events in this chapter seem disjointed: That was on purpose, just like it was every other time, lolz.

* * *

**Bumblebee's Intermission : The Hero Dies In This Scene  
**Though ... even if involuntary video recall was extremely unpleasant, it didn't stop him from accessing his memory banks often, anyway.

-+-

_"Close up: Camera One. The Hero sings in this scene. The boy that gets the girl get to go home where they get married.  
-- but stop the tape! The sunset still looks fake to me. The Hero looks like he can't breathe -- the damsel just left everything ..."_

-+-

Loneliness was for the most part a foreign concept to Cybertronians. Humans did have something that could compare to the concept, sort of -- their artificial means of communication were actually similar enough. When a human looked at the cell phone in their hand -- they know that they are not alone. At the same time, they could not contact someone they didn't have a number for -- that was what being a Cybertronian _meant_. It went a little further than that --

So long as a Spark pulsed in their chamber (that mysterious energy that defied every scientific explanation -- much like the human concept of soul, which was widely accepted though there was no proof) they were all connected. Some indicated that this was through the All Spark itself, from which their Spark immerged and to which it went when there was no more reason to stay behind. Though it was widely accepted to say that a mech that had been deactivated 'had their spark extinguished', it wasn't accurate. The Spark merely returned to the All Spark.

The truth was, no one had been completely sure that they would continue to function with the destruction of the All Spark.

But they did -- they continued to live, to function fine, even if they were the last. Bumblebee had been optimistic, though. When it came to their attention that Sam was -- was _changing_, it seemed like the answer had fallen right in their hands. If that was the answer -- to find the appropriate humans and find a way to replicate downloading the program into them, just like Sam --

Well, being written in ancient Cybertronian was a bit of a hindrance, but ...

And he'd had hope. It seemed that Bumblebee's optimism had paid off. After waking Jazz, Bumblebee had felt the first weak pulses of a Spark inside Sam, as his sensors weren't nearly as delicate as a medics, _intended_ to sense even the slightest hint of a Spark. And then --

With the patience that few thought him capable of, despite several shows of it, he erected firewall after firewall through his processors (_firewall, n. - a wall constructed to prevent the spread of fire_. Wasn't the English variation of human communication _fascinating_?) and methodically disabled his AR programs. Finally, he consulted his chronometer, and accepted that it had been thirteen days since his attachment programs had gone on the fritz and had created a sort of software related cascading failure, which his military-installed firewall had shut down in order to run AR.

Technically, he could have pulled himself out of AR within a few hours. He just hadn't.

Unfortunately, there was little his firewalls could do. He could not lock away his memories of Sam without his own curiosity driving him to unlock it -- a problem Sam himself had, before he was taken. He couldn't firewall his attachment programs, either. With nothing there, he'd suffer a cascading software failure of a much more severe sort, and possibly deactivate himself on accident. He would have to live with the knowledge that he had _failed_ to protect Sam -- who was a charge that he had _volunteered_ to guard, but also his friend, a type of partner, and a very young mech that was possibly the last hope of his people.

But he couldn't run forever on AR programs. He wouldn't learn to ... 'cope' while on AR programs, so he would have to face these things. Maybe later he would delve into the automatically recorded events that took place in between Then and now, and maybe later he would even apologize for whatever actions he took during the time he'd been running on AR, but for now ...

A dry squeal escaped his gears as Bumblebee unlocked them, noting by the dirt he had collected on his frame that he had spent at least seven of those thirteen days standing, stock still as a statue, outside the base. With a sharp sonic burst, he dislodged the irritants from his alloy and turned away from the lonely empty dirt road. It was no use watching for something that would never come.

With the nonchalant routine air of someone who had been doing the same thing over and over, Arcee appeared in the hanger doorway, idly carrying a small bucket of fuel -- only to spot him walking toward her. She hissed in surprise, then warily asked, "you running with all your circuits yet, little Bee?"

It was understandable that she was doubtful as to whether or not he was actually aware of what was going on, or just reacting out of pure programming. It was impossible to discern up until the mech in question either spoke or made some other indication that they understood what was going on. Still, it didn't stop Bumblebee from triggering a system's diagnostic, just to determine if he was. Finally deciding that he was, he nodded and came to a stop before her. She glanced down at the bucket in hand and questioningly held it out. He looked at it blankly for a moment, then took it but didn't open his tank valve.

"No thanks?" she said, humorously but with a testing manner. "I give you the fuel out of my own intake, and not a word?"

Bumblebee centered his visual field on the smaller mech, still-still-still. Not a word? Why should he bother? Arcee did not understand -- Bumblebee knew that her Spark was not compatible to his own and therefore her attachment program was bare-bones ... or rarely used, junk software laying unnoticed and unremarked just to keep a systems failure from occurring. Arcee was an excellent comrade on the field, a sharp shooter, swift, loyal, not one to leave another mech alive on the field abandoned. But Primus forbid she ever try to speak to someone with even only a mid-level attachment program, like Bumblebee -- especially after having lost one of those attachments.

It was useless to allow his software to become disrupted at her words: it solved nothing. And words? What use did he have for words?

None. The only one he really needed to speak out loud to had gone away.

-+-

For something with enough memory space to casually dismiss having lived for several million years, was it terribly surprising that life was rarely linear ... and more often, looping, or like a stone, skipping across a lake? And riding each breaking ripple that met another ripple and rippled yet another way?

And so, was it surprising that when Bumblebee decided he didn't like his current time, that he would simply ride a few conflicting-crashing ripples to another?

-+-

_**4-APRIL-07-2007.VFRR - ACCESSING - CONNECTING ... -- **_

"Hey, 'Bee," a vague thoughtful note, the soft purring touch of a human EA field brushing against him and leaving him pleasantly drowsy, "Do Cybertronians dream?"

Still scanning the radio, " ... No. Not usually."

"But they _do_." A statement of fact heard somehow through the vibration of an engine, perhaps. Clever intuitive strange little thing. Charmingly so, but so _strange_.

"Not like humans do. You dream because it helps you process things, or rest your brain." A short pause, then with a shyly embarrassed note: "Or that's why your scientist think you dream."

"But Cybertronian dreams --" like a wrench gripping the edges of a bolt and not letting go until the metal gave "-- how do you dream?"

"Video feed, normally. Like a silent flashback."

"Wow. Really? You just ... remember things? You don't ... because I have dreams, sometimes. I mean -- ... well, it just seems strange."

"How do you think we feel? You say that while you are otherwise unconscious and unaware of the solid world, your mind provides nonsensical visual and auditory hallucinations of varying horrific consistency, and if your body malfunctions, you'll actually get up and move around without otherwise actually being aware of it."

A long, long silence. Amusement rippled across wires in shades of yellow and orange, all due to the hiccup and quickening of the frequency produced by the tiny organic. Mid-to-long length, and still very nice.

"Goddamn, Bee, you know how to make me really freak out about my own species."

"You come from a very insane species. Thankfully, you happen to be their ambassador, so don't worry about it too much." Never had to worry so long as that EA field kept humming pleasantly and soothing out tensions that had gone unnoticed for so very long. With these words, the subcharge output slowed, long frequency again. Pleased.

"Yeah, well -- thanks, I think."

"You're welcome, Sam."

-+-

Cybertronian dreams were both more and less complex than humanity's. A silent flash back was an accurate descriptor -- but Bumblebee had made it sound as if he rarely dreamed, when in fact he dreamed more often that the average. It was probably because his personality matrix was easily upset -- he never forgot who it was that activated him, nor what he learned for the fifth of a vorn that he'd spent with them. It was a careful balancing act, honestly, and the disruptive nature of Earth helped matters little.

But he didn't have much of note to recall during recharge until he came to Earth. All of his Video Feed Recall had been based around his life: trying to deliver messages if he was recalling back far enough, but mostly fighting for his life or offlining Decepticons or risking his life to locate their bases when he wasn't ...

Then he came to Earth, then S7 entered his VFR, and humans with their skin oils and alien prickling EA fields were a part of it. Of all the places for the All Spark to land, it had to land on one of the few planets with sentient, sapient life. Obviously, for much of his time there, his recall didn't improve, and he had very little to look fondly on in VFR. Even when he met Sam -- well, he hadn't done much recharging during that whole fiasco, either. Still, it wasn't until the cycle during which he recalled a thin still-growing human, sweaty and dusty and bruised, cautiously edging up an incline with visual receptors fixed on him and speaking to the female, that he realized that VFR wasn't all bad. It reminded him of the hope that he'd felt when he saw Sam approaching him cautiously, thinking that even his disaster of an introduction hadn't ruined his chances to succeed at his mission and hadn't scared off the tiny human with an EA field like a full tank of power after running near empty for orns.

Though he didn't know it until he came to Earth, Bumblebee used to have nothing but 'nightmares'. It had been sweet when, for a short precious while, he 'dreamed'. Then Decepticons came and took everything important to him, and he was plunged into 'nightmares' again; they always stole _everything_.

(_they would regret stealing this_)

But for now, it was better not to recharge deeply enough for VFR. The once he had dared since coming out of AR, hoping for a good memory, it had been ... unpleasant to say the least. For a mech that had come to expect a pleasant recall, of either the purring of Sam's matter-of-factly ownership in his touch, and meeting up with Arcee with the promise of more Chase-class mechs who could challenge him in races, recalling instead Sam's nervous fidgety self-horror was a rude awakening. Ever since Sam had been k -- taken away, though, there seemed to be nothing but war to remember.

His processors and programs were on the fritz, battle protocols insisting that it was a lost chance, logic agreeing, but the attachment programs, the ones that wanted Optimus Prime to be proud of him and made him do horrendously ridiculous things just to gain a few amused clicks, _those _insisted that he use all of his programing and experience to locate where the Deceptions were and ...

Well, they were attachment programs, not battle strategy protocols. The best he could come up with was 'blow slag up'.

So Bumblebee rarely recharged very deeply. It meant he had to do it much more often, and actually consume some of Earth's odd fuel, but it also meant that he didn't remember the day that Sam insisted they all go out so that he could work up the courage to tell Mikaela about what was happening to him. The day that in a pure power-move that Megatron would have never even _considered_, the jets came by and _took_ Sam.

Sam was not exactly a quiet human. He was prone to yelling and yelping and repetitive denials, but the day they stole him, he hadn't even squeaked a word.

Though ... even if involuntary video recall was extremely unpleasant, it didn't stop him from accessing his memory banks often, anyway.

-+-

_**MARCH-19-2007.VFRR - ACCESSING - CONNECTING ... --**_

After a bout of vicious anger -- Bumblebee wasn't terribly surprised or horrified by it, even if Sam did seem very ashamed -- and a few words back and forth, Bumblebee had been intent on getting Sam home. Something he'd said had meant something in the mysterious stretches of organic tissue that humans used for a processor and called a brain, because by the time Sam climbed into the cab, his EA field was ... well, not like it usually was. Nice, still, but more slick and slippery than a pleasant hum. It happened on occasion, he noticed. It didn't make him lapse on the power to his various programs -- instead, it seemed to encourage the use of more.

That was when Sam so very innocently molested his very sensory laden windows.

What was referred to as a scout bot these vorns were originally designed to be ... well, 'waiters', originally -- 'fetch' bots, in a way. Meant to dodge through crowds of other mechs without inconveniencing anyone, and eventually fitted out with security bot's sensor panels so that the fetchbot could more effectively work his way through a crowd and avoid being knocked over from the back or struck by the short of temper. In either case, the innocent design of a fetchbot also made an insanely effective scout bot, sensor panels and nimbleness and all.

Therefore, having the weak human EA field applied directly to those sensors was a bit more than Bumblebee had been expecting. Even though most of the sensory information was scaled down a lot, as Bumblebee had gone into fits of sensory overload the first time it rained on Earth, an EA field interacted directly with the alloy that makes a Cybertronian's plating.

It wasn't pain, and it didn't exactly feel _good_, so when Sam had exclaimed in surprise that he was ticklish, that was pretty spot on. Not that Bumblebee was going to admit that.

The second time Sam did it, punishing him for trying to lie, the _intention_ behind it had been completely different and it really had felt ... pleasant. In a wholly inappropriate way. Somewhat horrified at himself, he had little attention to spare the naive human in his cab, far too concerned with trying to figure out what he was supposed to do with himself and trying very hard not to come to a conclusion that he suspected was the truth.

-+-

"(Mayday, baby-bot,)" came with harmonics of wryness and amusement over the radio.

Bumblebee's receptors twitched into a more alert position to make sure he didn't hear anything wrong or lose reception. Jazz's transmission was a little thready, warning him that the silver mech was on the out reaches of radio connection. "(Magnitude?)" he queried, not yet stirring.

"(Hmm -- five point three, maybe,)" Jazz returned. "(Requesting a two-mech team to run interference. Can you com Arcee?)"

Bumblebee obliguingly opened up a communication line on the chasebot's frequency. "(Arcee?)" he queried.

An answer came back in her metallic tones. "(Reading you loud and clear, Bumblebee.)" One day, Bumblebee would ask what made her chose the feminine identity when male was the default gender in English, whether it had been choice or laziness. If it had been chose, he would have to inquire what influenced that, but dreaded a response that she was likely to give -- such as the same when asked 'why blue': "why not?"

"(Jazz has a five-point-three danger situation, requesting a two-mech team's interference, Arcee specified,)" he relayed.

"(Location?)"

Not even four seconds after Jazz called for help, two mechs were on their way to object strenuously to whatever had dared to harass one of their members. (Bumblebee put his fist through one of the black car's engines. He hated S7 just enough to let hidden subroutines overpower his MN programs that normally would have prevented him from harming humans. No one was injured in the Autobot retaliation, but Bumblebee knew it was just a matter of time, especially since that faction had gone rogue.

Them and the Decepticons -- _they'd pay._)

-+-

_**MARCH-23-2007.VFRR - ACCESSING - CONNECTING ... --**_

For a time, Bumblebee had been well on his way to convincing himself that he really hated organics. It wasn't hard. Just like humanity must wonder about whether or not they were _truely_ alive or only showing a good face, it was a common query between the Autobots -- their human allies ... there was no Spark. Were they really alive, or only meat putting on a good show?

They were _alien_ to him and everything he knew. They weren't ... metal. Alloy. They didn't have processors or programs or codes of behavior that simply couldn't be bypassed without some savage reworking or hacking of said processors. They were ... flesh. Bone. Strangely colored things on the inside that were wet and stank and it was just ... _disgusting_ how they ate and sweated and their skins produced oils and their own skin flaked off and their hair fell out, _constantly_. All soft like mud or clay and wet and the sound of their juices squishing around inside of them was just ... repulsive.

(Because the beat of the heart, like the thumping of a pump, wasn't special at all, or enthralling, nor was the calming rush-rush of blood through their veins like coolant to straining gears. It wasn't fascinating how their clay-soft malleable faces bent and shaped expressions, or their entire bodies moved in a dance of unspoken communication, so they read and understood each other across rooms the way Cybertronians couldn't unless they were _listening_, or how every single one of them almost was completely unique from the position of their teeth to the colored streaks of their irises. It wasn't amazing that their white soft struts could be aligned and heal spontaneously without welding, that their skin could darken in shades of Decepticon colors for a while until it repaired itself. It wasn't anything to be impressed by, that on average they lived _less than a vorn_, but a single one could unravel one of their mysteries of life and harness the power of atoms.)

(Like with everything, humans were two extremes in one small package. Bumblebee was also horrified and fascinated with that.)

He wondered how Sam missed the shift in attitude, although Bumblebee was careful to keep his opinions to himself. It was part of the reason that Bumblebee just sat there, well aware that the human intended to inflict damage on him, though it was nothing he couldn't heal on his own and wouldn't even scratch more than the pigment on the outside of his armor. Whether it was a part of his own lower-processor ploy to distract himself with disgust with humans, or his higher-processor curiosity with humanity at large wanting to know if the boy would actually do it, he didn't set off his alarm at the painfully loud levels that would have protected him. This ... 'Trent' human was a fine example of things that Bumblebee disliked about humanity.

He was actually so wrapped up in analyzing the boy that Sam's appearance and outburst of violence shocked him cold. For the first time, he was thankful for his enforced silence while the other human, Miles, was in the car -- because _apparently_, the small _fragile_ being that he had chosen to protect ... wanted to protect him, too. That was --

Sam was so _small,_ fitting into his hands easily, though maybe not comfortably. Primus -- if he hadn't caught them that time, their soft little bodies would have given under the inertia and ... and _splattered_. They would have broken, like rubber stretched too thin and full of fluid ... and ...

And that little thing wanted to protect _him_? How was he supposed to succeed at that? And some of that must have come through to Sam, because he made a small desperate _anguished_ noise and fled the cab. From there on, it was an outpouring of rage and desperation and pain, and Bumblebee was forcibly reminded of an Autobot he had managed to rescue (accidentally) from one of the Decepticon bases. The mech had been so ...

'Traumatized' wasn't the right word, but his processors had definitely been horrifically scrambled. He refused to admit to his true designation, insisting that it was The Prisoner. Which was better than Slag, which had been his first confused suggestion when they'd asked.

The Prisoner had been one scrambled Autobot ... if he could even be called that. He had been hacked, of course, but they couldn't figure out if he had scrambled his own processors and programs and encoded everything nonsensically to the point where it couldn't ever be sorted out, or if that had been done by whoever hacked him. He was only an Autobot at that point because he'd do anything to destroy the Decepticons. He also raved insanely. No one was sure if they should be relieved or sad when 'anything' became planting an explosive under his pump and behind his fuel tank, and he walked right up to the base and blew himself up.

Either way, Sam had sounded so much like The Prisoner that Bumblebee had been very, _very_ worried about the human. The Prisoner's EA field had grated against everyone, broken and sharp and never the same wave length, always short waves and never the same pitch twice -- but Bumblebee had been willing to risk that just to make sure that the human wouldn't ... suicide like that.

(It was Sam, after all, who had spared no look back toward Optimus Prime, scrambling up with the All Spark in his hands a thrusting it upwards --)

But instead, the rage subsided, Sam calmed while leaning on Bumblebee's bumper, and made promises he could no longer keep.

-+-

Bumblebee could hate humans, and be revolted by organics, but he could never extend those feelings to Mikaela and Sam. But he was still relieved when Mikaela refused to sit in his cab. Nothing would feel right inside his cab but Sam's familiar shape and the long waves of his EA field.

-+-

"(So, it was pretty serious, huh?)"

Bumblebee roused from his power saving state at the sudden transmission over his radio. It took him a nano-klik to remember where he was -- in a parking lot of a mall, resting through the day with Jazz near by. Though they had all spread out over a relay-network so that they were less conspicuous, they had also partnered up a little. Jazz, who was the one of them that had the greatest range of mass shifting capacity, was currently pretending to be a Sunbird in an odd dark blue green and sitting several hundred feet across the parking lot.

It had been necessary to forgo ego, though it had taken very little encouragement for Bumblebee to return to his original body style -- and then he'd painted himself a dark maroon, since he couldn't stand _looking_ at yellow. When being hunted, every last scrap of their natural ability to disguise themselves was used -- which meant that they changed their car shape and color frequently. It consumed a lot of energy, so they also spent much of their time resting. It made Arcee and Chromia nervous, but Elita-One was rather good at controlling her group.

Her group had gotten rather diverse, though. The last time they had actual contact with Elita-One, previous to launching the All Spark, they had been much more standard ... it seemed that the war had changed things. Chromia, for one, had upgraded her body. Though her hardware was still that of a Chasebot's, it was evident that Elita-One had decided that they required actual fire power and that Chromia had volunteered -- unsurprising. She had a warrior's Spark, and would rather stand her ground than use her speed to avoid hand-to-hand. Now she was built nearly as heavily as Ratchet -- and while he wasn't built to fight, it was a lot sturdier than the Chasebot frame without sacrificing _all_ of her speed. Elita-One had also picked up a few of their scattered dormants -- one of which was a minibot currently going by 'Moonracer', which was a relief since ever since the war even _started_, minibots had been few and far between. Several mechs had expressed hope that they had only taken to hiding deep within the planet, but even if they had ... Bumblebee had managed to get it out of Ratchet that Megatron had _razed_ it.

He was kind of embarrassed that one of their only proof that Cybertron's healers still existed was Moonracer, though. She was -- ah, unique.

Jazz's companionable humming was still coming over his com, in typical Jazz manner. Bumblebee debated ignoring him, especially since he wouldn't get offended at all. Knowing Jazz, he might actually find it amusing.

Giving up, he switched the radio link to two-way. "(What, Jazz?)" he finally inquired.

"(That human kid. Witwilliky, or whatever,)" Jazz sent, still with that undertone of lighthearted impersonal curiosity.

"(His name was Sam,)" Bumblebee sent back, unable to completely stop the transmitter from adding the irritation he felt.

For a moment, the only thing coming over the radio was Jazz's thoughtful static. Then he added, "(So, you're still upset that the Decepticons took him.)"

That was part of the reason that Bumblebee didn't block Jazz's frequency, even though he wished that the mech wouldn't talk about Sam. When he did, though, it was never 'get over it' or 'he's dead' or 'it was bound to happen'. It was probably also the reason why Mikaela had switched to Jazz once it became clear that Arcee just didn't get it. He was a far cry from a therapist (or wanting to be one), and he was a poor choice to confide in, but he knew in a way what words to use.

Bumblebee didn't bother responding to that statement. It was rather obvious, after all, that he was still upset over the fact that _Sam_, for one had been stolen, and that the program went with him. Ratchet had a copy, they thought they could replicate it, but it was dangerous without waiting to see what sort of effect that it would have on Sam. If this had been the All Spark's last gift to them -- a program that could transform humans into Cybertronians ... to have lost that was devastating. If they would never know if a person could survive it, if they never knew what the end result was ...

Well, it was personal for Bumblebee, but it was easier to look at it as a loss for their species than it was to look at the damage done to his software.

"(He's not dead, yanno?)"

Frame jerking involuntarily, Bumblebee accidentally slammed the communication closed, reeling. _Not dead_? It was one thing to hear Jazz not use 'killed' when speaking of that day, but _not dead_? For a long moment, he vibrated in silence, replaying the transmission before he snapped the communication line back open rather sharply, clicking with agitation. "(What do you _mean_, not dead?)" he snapped.

With twisted humor, Jazz sent, "(I mean ... not dead as in alive.)"

"(_Jazz_!)"

"(Keep your cannons in,)" Jazz sent tolerantly. "(We don't know _what_ happened, baby-bot. I've been sayin' it all along. The Decepticreeps took the little squishie, but that was Starscream's way of rubbing our noses in. Wouldn't he have done something a little more obvious to make the move complete? Like ... kill the kid in front of us? We haven't seen or heard anything. Pit, we didn't even see Skywarp for most of that lunar cycle.)"

And he wanted to believe it. He _desperately_ wanted to believe it. There was no way Sam, the only redeeming quality that this entire race had, was _dead_. But if Sam wasn't dead, where was he? He was somewhere, surely. This was just -- just a prolonged version of Sector Seven. Sam would show up as soon as he could. Something was stopping him for a little ... that was all.

And he wanted to believe it so badly it hurt. No matter what his battle protocols insisted, or how much his logic circuits agreed. It was _too soon_ for Sam to convert, there had been no messages, Skywarp had used his vast power reservoirs, they hadn't been able to _track_ him, and while it was suspicious that Skywarp had disappeared with Sam, it was equally suspicious that they hadn't heard _a thing_ about it, either.

So, even as his processors churned out the information that it was very unlikely that Sam was still alive, somewhere, he _hoped_.

-+-

It was something of a mystery that humans had an EA field. Humans were so small, and their power so organic that the fact that they had EA fields at all had surprised Bumblebee when he'd made planet fall. He'd learned that he didn't particularly like the human EA field, though. It was hard and distant and disinterested, and their skin oils nagged his processors for hours afterwards. He hated how they had to _touch_ everything.

Optimus had trusted him, though, to get this done. Bumblebee had _needed_ this. Needed to be trusted, to go down alone, for perhaps several solar revolutions. He mastered his own revulsion at taking a form that organics rode in and did it anyway. He understood the necessity.

It had been a rash decision to put himself in a position to be purchased by the Witwicky family, though. He had been so surprised when he had accidentally stumbled across them that he had basically panicked, and had no plan going in. By that time, he had known enough about human customs and culture to know that his plan wouldn't work, but his MN codes had been damaged weeks ago during a misfortunate run in with a lightning strike ... (and they wouldn't get fixed until he had the All Spark and used it's excess power on a whim; though, between the excess All Spark energy that build in his circuits and them actually _winning_, those codes had been _useless_ for weeks anyway.)

He was so eager to be purchased by the Witwicky family (if they weren't the ones, he could just be 'stolen') that he hadn't even paid much mind to the owner of the used car lot putting his hands on him. It had been much harder not to notice when a second set joined the first, and the naturally cold and distant EA field suddenly sharpened and ...

Well, _hummed_ against his alloy. Bumblebee had been a little shocked and off balance by this, and the usual threat of being sat in was now less of a horror and now more than a curiosity. He completely ignored the other two humans, focusing completely on the young one that had leaned in through the window and then opened the door to climb inside. It had been -- _fascinating_ to have that small EA field generator submerged into his own field.

Bumblebee had been activated after the war had started, one of the many inactivated mechs jettisoned into space for their own welfare, as the retainers had been the first thing wiped out, to keep the armies from replacing their dead. By this time, any who hadn't been pulled in and deactivated by stars and suns had been found. So, to be honest, everything Bumblebee knew about EA fields came from the mechs around him. Naturally, the chances of anyone being relaxed enough to emit long waves if they could be coaxed to extend a field _at all_ were zip to zilch, so everyone kept it to themselves and the compounding software issues went unspoken.

Humans called it 'skin hunger'; his own people called it 'long wave deprivation'. Therefore, though it was an acknowledged ailment, it was a given and therefore unspoken one as well.

So, when Bumblebee got his first sample of a field that _wasn't_ unpleasant, he rather enjoyed it -- a lot. Yes, it was human, and was therefore small, weak, and came with that little _offness_ that pervaded everything about the organics, but it was still _so good_, and such a sudden relief to feel something that wasn't hateful, hurtful, _hostile,_ or cold.

So, maybe his attack on the little round vehicle could be excused, and his following attack on ... _all_ of the cars. His MN programs were malfunctioning, and Bumblebee just honestly wanted that sensation back. Perhaps his subsequent attempt to aid Sam in his courtship rituals could be excused as well. His MN programs were malfunctioning, and a severe overdose of long wave emissions just about shut that software completely down, causing him to suffer logic circuit malfunction -- he was more than just a _little_ high. Sam _liked_ him, and Mikaela's field wasn't so bad either.

He'd look back on those records and feel quiet mortified by his behavior. While unavoidable, it was still embarrassing.

It was a mixed tangle of giddiness, amusement, and panic that had lead up to what Sam had oh-so-quaintly referred to as the 'Satan's Camaro' event. Sam wasn't exactly subtle. Bumblebee had known he was there from the time he woke up. Getting the little organic caught by the cops and then chasing him across town and into Barricade had been _far_ from Bumblebee's intentions. It just ... sort of happened. And right after he'd contacted the others, too. What a mess!

But things worked out. Bumblebee, still suffering long wave deprivation that had lasted as long as he'd been activated, had been eager for more, and Sam seemed like the perfect source, being brave and loyal and liking him anyway. Of course Bumblebee had shared with the others that the cure to the affliction was here on Earth. It even factored into Optimus Prime's decision to remain on Earth. For such tiny, organic creatures with such a weak field, it was a powerful sensation. Getting a larger dose after such an unbelievably long time would have been detrimental to a mech ... overwhelming. It was best to start small.

It couldn't be excused that he hadn't _noticed_ that Sam's EA field was slowly getting stronger ... that Bumblebee never needed for more riders (though Sam provided them incidentally, all very fond of him and therefore all producing long waves), that he never desired for a mech to provide long waves.

Sam's field had nearly tripled in strength before he himself brought it to Bumblebee's attention that _something was wrong_.

-+-

_**6-JUNE-12-2007.VFRR - ACCESSING - CONNECTING ... --**_

" ... this ... is very odd. Bumblebee, you haven't been doing anything _strange_, have you, because if you have --" and the fist drawn back threateningly.

An alarmed chirp, hands raised to fend off the so-far nonexistent threat of a dent. "_No_, why kind of strange things do you _think_ I get up to?"

Dryly: "I don't know. I never got up to half the stuff you newly activated mechs get up to. _I_ was spending my time learning how to fix you bolt-for-brains up!"

"I haven't done anything I haven't been since I landed here," defensively.

"Hmph!" A thoughtful silence, more scans. "Did you even notice that your left tertiary shoulder gear has stopped hitching?"

A soft suspicious croon as said limb was adjusted. " ... oh."

A snort. "Oh indeed. If I didn't know better, I'd think you hadn't been activated for longer than a quarter of a vorn."

" ... we both know better than that."

"Indeed. Which is why I asked if you'd been doing anything strange."

A moment of reviewed records. "I haven't done anything unusual."

"Not consuming any strange fuels?"

"Of course not. I'm not _new_, I don't need it. Or electricity, for that matter."

"... hmm. Well, if your software is fine ...? And your memory banks are complete? Good. Maybe it's Earth." An expansive shrug. "Time will tell; I'm sure it's nothing to worry about. It's not as if you're running _worse_."

" ... still, it's strange."

"Bumblebee, we've run across strange things ever since this war started and we've ended up in uncharted territory. New phenomena crop up all the time. Just keep an eye on it and report back anything strange you discover."

The only possible answer was an affirmative.

-+-

The question of whether or not Bumblebee wanted to interface with Arcee was actually a little more convoluted than most (probably even Arcee) assumed.

To put it most bluntly (and perhaps too simply), Bumblebee was insanely jealous of Chasebot programming. It was one of the few things he liked about Earth -- with preformed alt modes that were not just disguise but _transportation_, Bumblebee was allowed to choose the fastest slickest most aerodynamic vehicle he could find that would suit his frame. He eventually came around to admiring the human predisposition to insane speed and their constant struggle for faster because he himself had that same desire. He wanted to be fast. Devoting entirely too much time to hunting down Chasebots and learning through hard work, dedication, and crashes how to pursue and escape them only did so much -- and Arcee just couldn't be beat.

It drove Bumblebee up a wall, to borrow the phrasing. Because being a chasebot went beyond simple shell, he could never outgrade into that model. His hardware was suited to scouting, aimed for running his shell, and the sheer processing capacity that allowed the chasebots to make snap decisions that could keep them from being dashed into pieces against some obstacle ... he just couldn't. Not without being completely reformatted, in which case 'Bumblebee' would only be an ghost in the codes of whoever the chasebot was activated as.

So, when Arcee was the _only_ chasebot he could never seem to beat -- not with speed, not with skill, not with the terrain in his favor and not even with dirty cheating tricks, it was frustrating, to say the least. He was firmly convinced that she was the only chasebot that was actually _unbeatable_, and that somehow made it completely different. That was -- well, to put it in human phrasing: that was _hot_.

In human values, his newfound interest in Arcee was rather shallow and superficial. In Cybertronian values, it was perfectly legitimate, and actually a little more founded than most interface encounters. (Or so he'd been told by Elita-One, which was one of _the_ most embarrassing encounters with a superior that he'd ever had.) In both cultures, however, the fact remained that unless both wanted it, it wasn't going to happen. (Well, both had coercion and rape, but that was so repugnant that it was something that was simply locked from being a possibility his action algorithms churned out.) No matter how 'in the mood' racing with Arcee put him, she simply wasn't interested.

It was perhaps why he'd been so eager and willing to help out Sam with Mikaela, even through his malfunction induced intoxication. Sam certainly appeared to be in the same situation ... well, as same as a duel sexed species could be.

Strangely enough, the moment she snubbed Sam, he found himself wondering what was so great about being unbeatable at racing. It wasn't like _she_ had faced down Megatron and lived to tell the tale. His processors turned over in confusion, trying to make adjustments in his programs to account for this shift in attitude. Even stranger, she seemed to approve of the change. Trying to sort that out, he often went racing with her, just trying to see if he could stir up the attraction or even the fixation he'd once felt. He couldn't, and that was ... very strange, and curious.

It wasn't until Sam washed him one day after a particularly rough race that he became alerted to the subdued whisper of the human's EA field, and the way it seemed to cringe away from his alloy even as Sam firmly scrubbed away stains and dried insects -- as if Sam was trying to close off his field the way a mech would (and couldn't without alloy to polarize). It wasn't until he tried to invite Sam to go on a drive and he had to _convince_ the human to climb in that he actually stopped to analyze the last weeks.

_"Compared to Cybertronians, it's not even a blink of an eye."_

_" ... don't blink or you'll miss it."_

That was when he suggested that Arcee try giving Mikaela a ride a few times. It was a good suggestion: it seemed that Mikaela could emit long waves, too.

-+-

Sam turning into a Cybertronian turned Bumblebee's world upside down. Not just because for three frightening days, Sam had done little more than either hold tight to whatever he happened to be nearest (the seats inside Bumblebee's cab, or the hood, or whatever limb or niche in his chest armor that was available). No, it was because Bumblebee thought that there might have been some sort of future for them. For Cybertronians as a whole.

On some level, he did understand that human-born Cybertronians wouldn't be the same thing at all as Cybertronians as he knew them, but to be honest, Bumblebee could live with that.

But adjusting to the idea that the frail organic he had befriended would one day (in a blink, for a Cybertronian) be the same as him was hard, and not just on him. He knew the adjustment rate would be low and might take a while, and that it probably wouldn't be easy, either. Sam had his own sort of software of an organic nature -- instincts, built into the blueprints of humanity -- that meant that it would be very difficult for him to start thinking in terms greater than orn-to-orn. For something that lived on average less than a vorn, to living thousands of years when all went well ... to thinking not in the turns of season but in the age of planets and the stability of stars.

Sam's (comparatively weak, but three times as strong as it should be) EA field was sparking and erratic and would be painful if it didn't settle down and move in mid-length patterns whenever he was near the human. Bumblebee made every effort to always be nearby just to keep Sam calm and to keep him from hurting himself. No words were spoken, no music played. Sam drank water, slept, and otherwise remained still, nearly catatonic, as close Bumblebee as he could get.

He had just started to convince himself that they had another The Prisoner on their hands when Sam came out of it and inquired about the date. It had to be part of what allowed them to evolve out in front of the other animals: this strange ability to take even something that repulsed their very core and keep moving.

That didn't mean that Sam took it completely calmly, and having heard his nightmares just a few days before, Bumblebee could understand why: Sam was immersed in one of his nightmares, so other than wrapping a protective hand over whatever Sam began attacking that day until he stopped trying to peel off his skin, Bumblebee just tried to be there for him.

After all ... this strange, tiny organic creature that was insanely brave in the face of certain death and wanted to protect something several times larger and much more durable was going to become one of _them_. It was ... something out of the legends and just overall fascinating and _terrific_. Even if he was going to be a minibot, Sam would still be one of them, and Bumblebee would no longer have to accept the knowledge that in less than a vorn, Sam would wither and die like all organics do.

Then he hadn't been able to keep his hands to himself, and touched the Cybertronian alloy socket that was attached to Cybertronian alloy _inside Sam_. He'd just wanted to make sure, to be able to touch Sam the way one Cybertronian would another. Minor data transfer. That was all. Instead, Sam had gotten a dose of Cybertronian energy from Bumblebee's build up, and it knocked him flat on his face.

When he had to _coax_ Sam into the cab a second time, Bumblebee began to worry that this brave little organic would break.

-+-

A long time ago, when he was still very, very young ... a newly activated mech that had been rescued from the Decepticons that had brought him online and were then displeased with his inability to be _cruel_ ... thousands and thousands of years ago, in between ferrying information that could end up with his circuits blasted to slag over dead-dead rock on this bleak hopeless planet, Bumblebee used to look up at the stars. He wasn't named Bumblebee back then, of course, not having earned such a distinction and still being in his imprinting phase. Back then his designation had been a word that had no equivalent in any Earth language. But when he had a free moment, he would look up and away, quieting his scanners and sensors to a dull roar and switching his visuals to the mild light spectrum.

In the midst of the hustle and bustle of his fellows, the familiar whirl-click, the hum of machinery, the playful crackle-spit of Cybertronian language, the most recently activated mech felt strangely singular. He had to wonder if this was where he was really supposed to be, if _this_ was what he was meant to be doing. It wasn't a glitch, and if it were a program, it was a ghost in his codes. There was nothing wrong with him that even the best of medics, Optimus Prime's Ratchet, was able to find. He was normal and healthy.

But there was something out there. Somewhere. (As if the All Spark was telling him he needed to be _somewhere else_.)

-+-

_"You know what? I wanna know if you were irreversibly turning into one of us, and you had the decision between a guy like me, or a girl like Mikaela, which would you become?"_

It was a question that haunted Bumblebee every day since they had lost Sam. He hadn't seriously considered it at the time. It was too outlandish, too unbelievable. He would have to loose tons of mass, and the chance of what was happening to Sam working in reverse was ... astronomically low. Even if he was infected with a program that instructed it how to work, metal couldn't turn into living flesh. He would have only been so much dead meat. The chances of him remaining sane after having as many vorns in his memory banks stuffed into an organic structure that couldn't even recall _one_ vorn with any true precision was ... quite unlikely. Without subprograms, how would he remember to breathe? How would his heart beat?

Could he handle being a soft squishy-clay-and-wet-and-weak human?

He was so wrapped up in the 'becoming human' aspect, he didn't even consider the real question Sam was asking him. _If your entire identity was going to change ... if you were going to gain a label you never had before (becoming male, becoming female), how would you chose?_ That part didn't even register until Ratchet had to help a woman in labor get to a hospital as they were running and hiding.

In labor. Giving birth. Bringing a new life into existence through her own agony, tears, blood, and body. She carried a tiny, helpless life inside of her for nine months (on average, hopefully. Weeks in either direction could be deadly). She would dedicate the rest of her life to raising, supporting, and worrying about another one of her kind. She got that way through that thoroughly disgusting act of sex.

Supposedly, humans really enjoyed it. Recreationally, too. Evolution made them that way, created sexual dimorphism. Sculpted both male and female into forms that the opposite gender found attractive, made reproduction pleasurable, made the humans clannish all in the name of survival.

Cybertronians didn't ... didn't _work_ that way. Physical appearance had little to do with 'attraction'. When it was possible to change their entire body with a careful enough medic, what was the _point_? They were the same wires, the same spark, the same _mech_. That didn't change, just what they looked like. They didn't have _gender_, just _model_. Model influenced _identity_ very little, and that was probably what allowed them to take the round organic shapes they chose for this planet, trying not to be too foreign or alarming to the natives.

Yes, they enjoyed sculptures -- they made their buildings pleasing to the scanner, symmetrical and sharp and polyprismatic, according to the orderly structures that pleased them most. They weren't _attracted_ to such structures -- rather, it was the _function_ and how well that function was fulfilled. Skill. Essentially, all surviving Cybertronians would be considered the elite of their society for simply having lived so long. They knew what they were doing, and they were _good_ at it. Otherwise, they wouldn't be operational.

Sure, the skill set or function that attracted a Cybertronian was different. Bumblebee's initial jealousy and envy was an immature form of that -- though he still coveted the form, that skill and speed -- and so he fixated on those skill sets, and Arcee in particularly for her reliably aerodynamic forms and ability to beat him in a race. Her skill with projectile weapons was well known.

Skill sets and function.

Well, not always. Humans had the same thing: there were always exceptions to the rule. Generally speaking, Ironhide, for example, preferred his mechs with lots of guns and the know-how. But he was glitched if he thought no one had noticed that he'd developed a bit of a thing for their talkative, temperamental and overall absent-minded medic. Ratchet didn't have much finesse for anything but repairing mechs and verbally (and sometimes physically) abusing them into submission -- but what he could do with metal was amazing. It was only that finesse, that _skill_, that had kept Jazz only in stasis lock, and not bleeding out and offlining.

Bumblebee hadn't been in the mood to laugh then, not with Jazz in danger, but he could now. Saving Jazz had been a little like being beat at racing with Arcee for Ironhide.

Amusingly, for all of Ratchet's brilliance with wires and power and metal, he was a bit of an idiot otherwise. Jazz and he had discussed at sniggering length that despite the extensive knowledge Ratchet had on hardware and software, it was doubtful he understood _why_ Ironhide gravitated toward him and had a tendency to shove him when situations got a little tense, just that it was a habit the weapon specialist had and was something that was strange but tolerable.

Amusingly, it was Bumblebee's own human translated name that lead him to the knowledge of a species on Earth that was vaguely like the Cybertronians themselves. After all, the All Spark was the source of all Sparks, and they took care of the planet but were sterile without it. Inclined toward order, with procedures and a complex society ... they shared characteristics. They were essentially a hive type of society, with a dead 'queen'.

So why, when they only built proper bodies and the All Spark gave the body its _self_, did Cybertronians gravitate toward one another that way? It was, according to Ratchet, a part of their society, and always had been -- not common, but it wasn't _unusual_. It was accepted. Certain mechs would just gravitate toward others, especially those with complex attachment programs -- such as Jazz and Ironhide. Approximately one third of all functioning Cybertronians responded in such a manner -- completely unremarkable until they happened into contact with another and fixated. The two remaining thirds were somewhat bemused but overall tolerant.

With that in mind, to suddenly realize that half of the billions of humans on this planet had the ability to bring another life into the world (not once, but repeatedly) was both awe-inspiring and horrific. Bumblebee had known about humans and genders and sex. But he hadn't _known_, understood, or actually _realized_ it. And it brought that echo of the question Sam had asked.

_"... a guy like me, or a girl like Mikaela ... ?"_

Perhaps Cybertronians had the ideal life. Humanity was so ... fractured. Two genders. Two had to work together to fulfill biological demands. Soul mates. Husband and Wife. Man and Woman. Sister and Brother. Father, Daughter, Mother, Son. Pairs. Two parts, and _lonely_. Bumblebee wasn't a philosopher, or a culturists, but the concept _pervaded_ all of human culture. Two parts to make one whole. Songs and poems and stories and philosophy and psychology, and the all-common sensation of alienation around those that should have cared, understood, loved, known the best. If he had been a human, he would have been very, _very_ lonely. Was Sam lonely? Maybe he was. All of this thought occurred within five seconds of Ratchet's alert, and Bumblebee knew how to answer Sam's question. Too bad Sam wasn't there to hear it.

(would he ever? Bumblebee promised to tell, if he would just. Come. Back.)

-+-

_The sun's light hit the curve of Earth's atmosphere and broke, shattering into a rainbow of colors, all short and quick. It painted the curving gases filled with particles in violent reds and vibrant pinks, orange ball in the sky and yellow light. Rich yellow like the color he used to be, the one he favored -- tinged with orange and red so it wasn't challenging, but mellow and friendly. _

_Not anymore. He was a dark bruised maroon, like human injury. Like the bands of his hand and Optimus Prime's fingers, stretched over Sam's delicate bandaged ribs. He had laughed, bragging about his injuries, but they were all purple and deep red and green and yellow and brown, and he moved so tenderly ... _

_Bumblebee sat alone, at the look out point, watching the sun break like a ball of colored oils over the blue-water sky. A friendly human-hand-shaped claw (four thin nimble digits as opposed to his griping powerful three, a thumb to match) gripped his shoulder as the smaller mech came to a stop beside him. It was impossible to guess if he were as small as a human or as towering as Prime and therefore impossible to guess the size of his companion._

_"Looking at the stars, I can understand," Sam's dry amused voice, amplified to match the size and yet hollow as if from inside some metal enclosure (no mech's voice sounded like that) said, "but the sunset? Isn't that a bit ... I don't know, _romantic_?"_

_Bumblebee didn't bother looking (the mech as familiar to him as his own body), didn't take his gaze from the orange sun. "All of our light and heat came from the planet's surface," he explained. "It's odd to see it come from far away."_

_"But you must have seen solar systems before ours," he said with simple human logic. _

_"We didn't come across many with life. It was mostly moons, and planets hot enough to leave us operational even though the sun was so far away." _

_The mech settled down to sit beside him, crouched forward over his knees, though it was more comfortable for Bumblebee to lean back. He looked, then, at the mech with Sam's hollow tin voice that spoke the way Sam spoke. He was heavily armored, solidly built, but with clear human proportions, unlike the wide chests and long legs of Cybertron native. He was ... a tank. Designed to be armored and protected. _

_Protected from what? Protecting what? Bumblebee didn't know how to ask. _

_The Sam-mech looked over with bright gold eyes, human face built of dozens of little white ceramic pieces, generic, amour painted a glittering chocolate brown and white. "Do you think a human could survive being on Cybertron? I mean, there is atmosphere, right?"_

_"Not the kind a human could breathe," Bumblebee said sadly. "Sorry." _

_"Well," Sam said, the way he did, noisy and round about like he couldn't say anything simply and straight, "I guess I'll just have change, then." He fixed his gaze on the orange-ball sun, face turned toward it and reflecting light off the sharp separate plates like a broken mirror of a mask. Bumblebee watched with only a vague horror, a detached distress rippling across his EA field as red-pink-yellow oil welled up and poured out of all the seams of the Sam-mech, and with a delayed (unrealistic, physics didn't work that way) shifting, the empty shell fell to pieces, empty, as if nothing had ever been inside it at all. _

_A spitting blue electricity fled the abandoned shell, arching across the tiny thin dead grass, before it disappeared deep into the Earth. _

Bumblebee came out of recharge with a rather loud clank of startlement, only to settle when his scanners informed him he was in a parking lot, spending the night until they could leave and hunt for safety in the morning.

"(Nightmare?)" Jazz inquired with an easy nonchalance, though he should be too far away to have heard the alarmed noise that had escaped Bumblebee's ER transmitter.

"(Of course not,)" Bumblebee said with automatic denial, though he felt a hollow echoing inside him as if his silent voice vibrated inside an iron drum. "(We don't have nightmares. Or dreams.)"

"(Didn't used to,)" Jazz agreed with humorous clicks. "(But you an' I haven't been the same since the All Spark was destroyed.)"

Bumblebee had nothing to say to that, processors obsessively turning that statement over while he heard the unspoken words that Jazz himself had been having them, too.

-+-

_"Close up: Camera Two, 'cause the Hero dies in this scene. Your inspiration is the lost of absolutely everything.  
And flashback on the girl: as we montage every memory; and we bleed out in the bathroom sink --"_

-+-

If he were dreaming ... Cybertronians only dream when something was wrong with them. Bumblebee couldn't imagine anything more wrong with him than Sam being _gone_.

-+-

_"And we fade out as the soundtrack sings:  
You're like a black cat with a black backpack full of fireworks and you're gonna burn the city down right now ... whoa-oh-o-oh ... whoa-oh-o-oh ..."_

* * *

.

- Please remember that not even humanity understands themselves. This is not different for giant robot aliens.

-An explanation of the EA field and the ER transmitter: Because, as robots, they have no face and no body language, I created a different sort of non-word expression system for them. The EA field is basically waste energy that changes in frequency in accordance to emotion -- feeling a certain way makes them work a little different, just like with humans, and they have developed a way to translate that into mood. An ER transmitter is the thing that lends 'inflection' to their information. It basically turns them into percussion instruments.

- Song: "Black Cat" -- Mayday Parade


	12. Little Bot in the Big City

**Chapter Eleven: Little Bot in the Big City  
**The fact remained that Sam was running across some very curious issues -- namely: the difference between 'possible' and 'Sam being able to do it'.

-+-

_He was speared over and through with thousands of cables-wires-metal-lines, hanging suspended and stiff like a puppet-unused-but-displayed and yet not in pain. Gentle energy pulsed-pulsed-pulsed into him and left him like a generator motor making gas into electricity -- in washed the ice-cold-cold blue sparking energy, rippling inoverthrough the wires and into him and it was cold only until his body warmed it and it pulsed out in gentle warm whiteandyellow colors, breaking out across thousands and thousands of little wires-cables-lines leading somewhere he couldn't see and didn't care. _

_"It's through, then?" he asked, almost plantively. _

_**All things have come together. The Process is complete. Life is ... here.**_

_"This is going to get really messy," he replied solemnly. "You know that, right? It's not going to be neat or ... _perfect_. Not the first time."_

_**There is no other applicable choice. Life must continue -- life must ... evolve. The two are not as separate as first appear.**_

_"Oh." A frisson of surprise. "Well, okay, then."_

_Another wash of cold energy transformed through him. He was somehow prepared when a second wave followed the first, and then a third, stronger. It seared through him, crackling, not transforming and leaving. Then a fourth rippled down the lines, on the outside of the cables-wires-lines, and it wrapped around him until it plunged like an intangible fist into his chest. The wires-cables-lines mattered not at all in the face of pain through every last molecule (becomes a substances, becomes a cell) of him, vibrating like water spitting from a hot oiled pan. _

_**Wake up, child. The time has come. I am ready. We are prepared for what is to come.**_

_(as two become one shall two and one again)_

_**Wake.**_

-+-

_Systems initialized. IIIIIIIIII_

_CPC start up. Connecting ... Completed. Running stability check. ... completed. Stabilized. Running capacity check. ... completed. Memory Usage: 000.0000011% _

_Current Capacity: 15% and rising. _

_Logic Circuit startup ... Connecting .... Completed. Analyzing Systems. Running Systems Check. Running ... Completed. Memory Usage: 000.0000012% Current Capacity: 30% and rising. _

_Laser Core powering. Analyzing radiation patterns. ... completed. Writing subprogram codes ... loading ... completed. Initializing ... completed. Analyzing .... stabilized. Systems go._

_Connecting. Analyzing seity files. Affiliation: UNKNOWN. Connecting data files. _

_Error. File replication detected. Error. Incomplete/Corrupted files. Error. Incomplete/Corrupted Files. Err _

_Systems Crash in 5 _

the darkness pulsed-notpulsed, a shot of _**bottle lightning blue**_. it touched everything and everything touched it -- and the frozen mechanics flickered back to life.

_Data Files Located. Anomalous Data located. Assimilating data ... Complete. Additional Subroutines created. _

_Analyzing Data Files. Primary Files Analyzed. Primary Files: Incomplete. Initializing _IM APP_. Connected. Secondary Files: encrypted. Locked. _

_Connecting subseity files. Error: Secondary Files located. Error: Incomplete/Corrupted files. Error: Incomplete/Corrupted Files. Err _

_Systems Crash in 5 _

that pulse-unpulse of _**bottle lightning blue**_ and things reasserted themselves.

_Connected. Subseity files analyzed. Subdesignation: Samuel James Witwicky. Superdesignation: UNKNOWN. Secondary Designation: Õµñævæ_Û___

it changedunchanged, and the line was deleted, never having existed at all

_Locked. _

_Firewalls 1-90: holding. Firewall 91: damaged. Firewall 92-101: holding. Running Shell Diagnosis. Running ... Completed. _

_Gear 243: Damaged. Right arm disabled. _

_**bottle lightning blue**_

_Situation Normal. Systems idling. _

a pause, a darkness, and nothing-nothing-nothing and -- _**bottle lightning blue**_

_Initializing ACTIVATION EXE_

It was dark. Infinitely dark. The space was not as infinite as the darkness, nor was it threatening. It wrapped around him and cushioned him comfortingly. The quiet hum of motors kept him relaxed. It was familiar, in a way, listening to the quiet humming while the soft velveteen darkness pressed in comfortingly. He was a slippery sliding thing, curling round and round and round. Guided, just a little, but mostly free. And Safe. He felt very Safe, somehow for the first time in a very long time, but he couldn't remember what happened before that. He didn't know what made him feel Unsafe so that feeling Safe was so nice and new.

After a while, he became curious of the world beyond his immediate surroundings. He reached out (he did reach, right? He couldn't see, it was too dark, but it felt like he reached), trying to feel something in the darkness, but then fell back and centered his consciousness again. Gathering himself, he reached back out into the darkness, searching for the edges of this small dark world he could sense. He stretched further this time, reached longer, but had to fall back just like last time, centering his consciousness and curling twinning circling for a moment.

This time, he didn't reach tentatively, or wonderingly. This time he thrust with confidence and _determination_ into the darkness.

_There_! He found a wall, grasping it and fluttering-pulsating in victory -- and then the wall grabbed him back. A cold hot pike of terror went straight through him, and he writhed, trying to escape it. It had a hold of him, though, and it began to _suck him in_ and no matter how hard he struggled, he was being pulled along --!

There was only a split moment of awareness of being pulled in several different directions (and though it was not painful, and even seemed strangely _natural_, it was terrifying), and then he was in a _different_ sort of darkness, completely different. He was no longer a slippery thing that curled and twinned, he was a ... he was ...

He was paralyzed.

Paralyzed, muted, blind -- not deaf. Auditory input was working at acceptable levels, informing him that there was a terrible lot of noise somewhere nearby. Sensory input was adequate. Wireless Networking suffering interference. Radio Comm disabled. All pumps operational. Coolant maintaining low body temperature ... low enough to discourage him from moving. Not _stop_ him. There was also an annoying rushing noise, and he was ... moving slightly.

For a long moment, he just soaked that in, tentatively accepting all of this information. He was still in darkness, but it was a much different sort of darkness. He now had a sense of _more_ than just the darkness, or the vague guiding that he had experienced just before. (There was a _before_, and _after_, now. Not just _the present_.) He ... felt vaguely horizontal. Marveling at that, he searched himself for more information. A sense of shifting, of _sharpening_, and he realized that there was a very light pressure all over him, and the pressure of his own weight pressing him into the softness below him. At that level, though, it quickly consumed too much of his attention and started to grate on him, so he relaxed back until the sense of pressure dissipated.

After a moment, it occurred to him to wonder about more than himself, and wonder about the outside-himself. That was when he realized that he didn't know: there was no part of him that could tell him where he was.

So. There he was ... in some undisclosed location ... unable to move, speak or see what was going on. After mulling over that for a moment, he became concerned about this, so he reassessed what he did know about where he was. Information relayed from some part of his head, informing him that there was a lot of 'rushing', some grinding noise, and that there was some unknown substance moving around him and tugging him slightly. Only his lighter parts, he noted. Fingers, feet ...

He had fingers and feet.

Marveling at that, he wondered if he could move them. After a few increments of time, he discovered he couldn't, much to his disappointment. It did, however, bring the increments of time to his attention. To his bemusement, he seemed to be aware of existing in parts of a second. He thought it was a second. It might have been a second. He knew that everything was moving at a horrifically slow rate compared to the spinning numbers that seemed to indicate time passing, and he knew that there was no way that a single of that increment was a second.

It would almost be fascinating if it wasn't freaking him the fuck out. He _knew_ that time didn't move like that and it was _wrong, wrong, wrong_, so he shut it off. Once it was gone, he relaxed again, and turned his attention elsewhere. This paralyzed-mute-blind thing was really starting to get on his nerves. Feeling rather confident having defeated the wrong-time device, he turned his focus on that. How to change that?

Well, shutting off the wrong-time-device had been fairly easy ... pretty instinctive. He had wanted it gone and it went. (Was he God?) He had _wanted_ it away, and it was gone.

He just had to find the right command to get him the result he wanted. First, however, he should probably make sure that he could _want_ things back into existence before he disappeared something that he needed. Warily, he turned his attention to that part of the dark place that held the wrong-time-device. After a moment of arguing with himself whether or not he really wanted the wrong-time-device to exist again, he decided that it was best to try out this _wanting_ power. So he bent his attention and demanded the wrong-time-device back.

It obediently snapped into existence again, and to his chagrin, it had been measuring time while it didn't exist, informing him that 14,056 parts of time had passed since he had last looked at it.

Sheepishly, he wanted it out of existence again. Well, that wasn't quite correct, was it? It was clearly still in existence, still working, even while he wasn't reading it. So he wasn't wanting it out of existence, he was merely ... ignoring it?

All of his thoughts, tangent off, eventually came back to him with 'results inconclusive'. That was the first time that he noticed that as each thought occurred to him, it ... went off, gaining its own independence until it came to a conclusion and rejoined the ... it ... his ... center ... him. It rejoined him. Which was strange. He was more accustomed to only being able to follow one line of thought at a time. He had reached the end of several since becoming aware of himself. This alarmed him on a strangely deep level, so he wanted that away, too.

If he could tangent his own thoughts, then perhaps he could tangent out a search for -- _ah_. Okay, that was nice. Useless, but nice, since apparently there was no 'you are here' maps. Or a user's manual. (Why would he need a user's manual?) Back to wanting things into working, then.

A moment later, as he was struggling to locate something to want _at_, he felt something else activate. Inspecting the thing, a feeling-memory from his time as a slippery changing thing came back. He vaguely remembered something before becoming aware of the darkness, and this felt similar to what he could-couldn't remember. But he was aware of this, and he knew what this strange thing was doing. It was -- it was _highlighting_ things for him to want at, lighting them up in neon. Things he wasn't aware off previously were brought to his attention, and he cringed-didn'tcringe (what could he cringe? His body was paralyzed) at all of the new things he suddenly knew existed when previously, he had nothing but his thoughts and the wrong-time-device. Which, that strange program informed him, was a chronometer. Which was a bad joke; he knew what a chronometer was. That was a watch. Who could use a watch that didn't even tell the right time?

More importantly, this strange body filled with unfamiliar things was starting to seem a lot more normal. His leg felt the grinding beneath and the rushing over and above, as did the rest of him, instead of him being distantly aware that he had a limb that was being acted upon.

That was ... different. Warily, he thought back to the strange process, and the memory came to him as sharp and clear as if it were happening again. Marveling at the sharpness and detail, he replayed it a few more times, then reached back into the rest of him, touching things that he was now aware of. Miraculously, it worked. It seemed that the 'thought' that became a command that set off the ... search and locating programs worked for all sorts of things. His perceptions of his immediate outside-his-body surroundings altered drastically.

Optics: online. Motor Function: online. Weapons: offline. Scanners: online. Firewalls: inspected and reinstated. Sensors: optimal. Wireless Networking: disengaged as per self-defense. Radio Comm: partially enabled. Core Temperature: rising to optimal functionality.

He fumbled hard when the optical input began to pour in, and had to shut them down again for a moment. After replaying the memory a few times, he tried again, directing the feed into a different section of his brain and analyzing it ... sideways, for lack of a better way of thinking about it. Then he began to isolate the data, separating layers of visual feed.

After doing that for a while, he shut it ... he shut ... closed ... he _wanted_ off his vision, and quivered-notquivered (didn't dare stir his body) for a moment. Something was adding up wrong in his head. Something was _wrong_. Optics? Visual fields -- weapons, scanners _firewalls_ online offlinemotorfunctioninspectedreinstatedchronometerwatchtimenothiswrongwrongwrong --

After some time (963,856 of those not-real-units, which was almost one larger not-real-unit), his sense of quivering ceased, and he reached tentatively for the memory of the visual feed again. He saw in a lot more than just in-color now. Of all the ... the strange filters and odd things, he only had words for what he thought might be ultraviolet, infrared, and was might have been _magnetic fields_. (_He only had words for --?!_) Those were so ali -- so _weird_ that he had to filter them out until his optical input matched what seemed most familiar. It didn't match exactly, but it was as close as he thought it was going to come, and it was _good enough_.

Having succeeded at that, he decided to ignore the nonsensical input. It looked familiar, but he couldn't make a lot of sense of what he was seeing. If he had weapons, and ... _firewalls_, then he must have other perceptions of the world. He felt along blindly and finally came across another way of perceiving the world. Dual input informed him that his hands were in some sort of mineral, and that he was residing within some sort of iodine rich environment, which was also heavily doused in oil and grease and wet wood and rotting flesh and waste. He tasted from his hands and smelled from his entire body.

This amused him terribly, but he wasn't sure why.

Turning both of those fairly useless things off, he reached for more ways to perceive the world. After a while, he came to the conclusion that he had something rather like echolocation. This was rather _useless_, since he couldn't make heads or tails of the data that gave him.

... well, he certainly wasn't _going_ anywhere, was he?

His chronometer informed him that twenty-two of those larger not-real-units of time had passed since he started trying to learn how to work his other-perceptions. On the upside, he had figured out how to ... sorta use them. He knew that he was fifty feet off the beach, ten feet below water, and that his echolocation scared the fuck out of fish.

There was no more putting it off. He had to move: there was a building sense of urgency that warned him that he if he spent much more time in what must be the ocean, his joints would be _really_ messed up. Which sort of made him feel bad for some ... people? that had been put in the really deep water. But not too bad, because even if he wasn't quite sure who they were, he knew that they had really pissed him off.

Okay, first thing first. He had to move. It would help if he _could_.

In the end, he had to resort to something he thought he remembered. Yellow and red. Long sharps shining? Yellow. Lots of yellow, and 'wiggle your big toe'. Only, for him, it was a lot less 'wiggling your big toe' and much more like 'twitch your boom-box sized fist'. While a program erected to look after succeeding at that, another part of him started hunting for more information on himself.

It seemed to be something of a lost cause. He circled his thoughts ceaselessly, and couldn't bring himself to address one corner of the dark place. He didn't have a users manual (_why would he have one?!_) and he was struggling to work a body that was strangely foreign in a world strangely familiar (though he was sure he wasn't supposed to be underwater). His anxiety built while he circled endlessly, avoiding searching too deep least he found something he didn't like (what could he not like?!).

Every process in his CPC came to a standstill when a power pulse rocketed down a wire and his hand twitched.

Programs whirled to life, replaying the sensation and everything that had been occurring at the time. The data was cut into measurements that could be fed into algorithms, analyzed and stored. After a few miniseconds, he decided he might know enough to figure out how to reproduce it, and tried again. That time, his fist clenched.

Thrilled with his success so far, electrical impulses rocketed back and forth through his insides until he regained some semblance of decorum, and set to work reproducing the power surge through his entire body. Finally, he was able to move. He had to struggle up out of the sand, being a creature that weighed a ton or so, and his head broke through the surface of the water. Feeling giddy (he could feel giddy?) he looked around to see where he was.

Apparently, his optics could telescope.

After he got _that_ under control, he pushed himself to his feet. He was doing pretty good over all. Up until he saw his own hand, at least.

That spot in the dark space sprang to life, pumping him with information. Suddenly he knew _who_ he was and now he knew _what_ he was and he knew what he _should be_ but _wasn't_. Staring at the mechanical claw and _sharp_ edges and pieces of armor and wires and gears that build the thing _attached to him_, Sam Witwicky _shrieked_, a horrible mechanical noise that sounded like squealing tires and engines trying to achieve the impossible. _What had he become!_

-+-

The thing no one probably saw coming when they considered an organic creature becoming a mechanical monster was suffocation.

Well, very obviously, being inorganic meant that there was no need to breathe. No breathing apparatus. That's how it worked with mechanical organisms, after all: no need to for the function, nothing to fulfill that function. What didn't change was that the mind was still human, and the human mind occasionally thought to wonder how that breathing thing was going. When the body is mechanical, and no breathing is required and there was nothing to breathe with ... the lack of a need to breathe didn't hold a candle to the very _basic_ instinct to breathe.

Over the last five minutes, Sam had been alternately starting up, and shutting down, and had done this approximately thirty times: it was the bad side about being able to think in those minuscule measurements of time. Panicking with a processor for a brain and firewalls and safety measure in place apparently meant that he'd automatically fall into 'hibernate' mode. This was supposedly to save him ... from ... something. Rather like the human reaction of passing out, though he suspected that it was actually an electrical overload, not ... why ever humans passed out.

Luckily, over those brief periods of consciousness, he had slowly managed to master his mind, by ... basically focusing solely on something else. Completely. It had worked, to an extent. By which Sam meant that he was now face-down in the sand, still underwater, and scanning the beach. He hadn't been alone as he thought, though he hadn't realized that until after he ... freaked out.

Now aware of them, he realized that even underwater and while having the robot equivalent of panic attacks, he had heard and recorded the human's alarmed and curious yelling. For a moment, he panicked until he realized that they hadn't been there to witness him rising up, and had actually been responding to the ... the _noise_ he'd made when he first saw himself. Now he was trapped underwater, claws dug into the sand to prevent the tides from taking him anywhere now that he was no longer wedged into the bottom.

The humans were showing no inclination to leave the beach now that they'd arrived, and after sitting around for nearly three of those larger-not-units of time, he decided that he _had_ to get out of the water. He quickly measured up the differences, and figured that as long as he dragged himself along by his claws, he'd remain safely unnoticed. He crawled under water this way for a fairly good distance before he came across a freshwater stream which was emptying into the ocean. That seemed to be a great idea, as it would help wash out some of the salt and sand that had gathered in difficult places.

It was also fairly abandoned, so he could stand up.

Sam did so, wobbled dangerously as water poured out of his hollow body, and then struggled up through the silty water, fighting with the muddy-sandy general unpleasantness around him. He was struggling very hard to succeed at all of this without looking at himself. Scanning his surroundings with a sort of paranoia that would make Miles proud, he moved slowly up stream, trying to get as much of the sand and mud and silt washed away as he could before he finally was forced to struggle up on to the bank. He crawled until he found firm land and settled himself on it tentatively.

After a moment of steeling himself, he looked at his hand.

It was _hideous_, gunmetal gray and riddled with molten streaks of burnished silver and flashing gleaming chrome metal. It moved when he closed his hand, four vicious inhuman claws clinking slightly as they met the segmented palm and the shorter hook that made his thumb twitching idly next to them. He shuddered hard enough to make his ... segments clatter together. It didn't sound exactly like metal striking metal, but it was -- it was like -- he couldn't breathe -- _he couldn't breathe he wasn't human he was a monster --_

Four thousand, three hundred and four of those small not-units of time later, Sam came back online (it was surprisingly soothing to translate the numeric information into alphabetic equivalents). He delicately sat up and firmly didn't look at his limb for a long moment, scanning his surroundings to make sure he would still go unobserved. Still no human life signatures. Cautiously, he returned his gaze to his arm.

Different segments came in different colors, he realized after a moment. He was mostly built out of the gray stuff, gunmetal dark, but there were strips of burnished copper that helped construct him, and small bands of gold. It was ... it was _alien_, but not ... he revised his opinion. It wasn't ... hideous. It was ... sharp and cruel, all cutting edges and not very reminiscent of humans, and --

His fans clicked on with a grind of unlubricated metal, and the sensation of air moving through him calmed him a little, the vibrations of grinding metal rippling through his armor and making him feel a measure of _life_. They whirled softly, only heard because they were a part of him that was moving, rather like hearing the blood rushing through his ear drums (that no longer existed). He still couldn't _breathe_, but the fans cycled air through him and cooled down his circuits and reminded him that it wasn't necessary for survival anymore.

It would have been nice to be able to breathe deeply or swallow to gather his courage, but he could do neither. He didn't have a throat, and he didn't have lungs. Instead, he looked at the sky for a moment before returning his gaze to his body. He was ... all metal. All metal, and sharp edges. Crystallized. Sharp edges, threatening, _dangerous and angry and cruel_ --

The fans whined with strain as they tried to keep him calm and cool, but he was having yet another panic attack, because he was terrified that his _optics might be red_. He certainly was favoring a Decepticon, design wise! All sharp cutting edges and he had _freaking spikes_!

If his body resembled a Decepticon, then his face --!

The claws flying toward his face nearly brought his panic attack into another hibernation period, until he recognized them as his own. Tentatively, he moved them toward his face again, running the sharp tips lightly across his features.

_He didn't even have anything even vaguely resembling a face_!

A few false starts later, Sam came back online for longer than fifteen miniseconds (he didn't know what else to call them), staring at the sky overhead, which was turning a delicate purple from the setting sun. After ascertaining that he was still alone, he offlined his optics and tentatively reached for his face again. It wasn't as bad as he had thought. He didn't have much in the way of a _human_ face, but neither did he have any ... weird ... mock-teeth or anything. There wasn't much in the way of a mouth-structure ... he had a few overlapping sections, but nothing to them.

He had movable pieces on his face, like Bumblebee had before that silver mask that gave him a moveable human face. Sharp, though. Cutting edges. Not round and friendly like he wished they would be. They shifted and moved, like expressions. Sliding his claws over his jaw, he investigated the vicious metal growths and smoothed his digits over his head. A helmet of sorts, not as angular as the heads of Decepticons. More rounded like the Autobots, so there was hope for him yet. He jerked, snatching his hands away from the pair of growths on his helmet, then tentatively reached for them again. His head wasn't really -- head-shaped, but there were these -- growths that splayed out, an array from temple back, long flat fin-like things. Even as he touched them, wincing slightly, they shifted, aligning into one long spike that still managed to flinch away from his claws.

Sensitive. Very sensitive. Finally, he stopped doing the equivalent of feeling up a bruise and lowered his hands, onlining his optics so that he could check the rest of him out. Armored, yes, but only sparingly. He was extremely vulnerable at the moment, conspicuous. He wondered if he was the Cybertronian equivalent of naked, and that made him laugh silently. His structure was ... strange, and alien. Those wires and tubes were ... a part of him. He tentatively reached out and with all due care, slipped his claws between a gap in his armor.

He could feel his own claw, feel the wires at the tip of those dangerous looking digits. Copper colored framework like an inside out skeleton. Not a completely inaccurate description, he noticed, running his claws over the bands of metal that looked a lot like a rib cage. He shuddered again, hearing that not-quite-metallic clatter, and scanned his surroundings. It was dark enough that he felt fairly safe in moving around, but first ...

Carefully, he rolled back onto his ... er, front, as he didn't have a stomach, right? Well, he rolled over and carefully began to inch his way back toward the water. It was just dark enough that his optics should be giving off some measure of light, and with another shudder, he leaned forward toward the blackened water. Fans twitched in relief when he could make out what was clearly a blue glimmer in the running-rippling water, and he carefully shuffled, easing himself up onto his hands and knees and then carefully sitting back on his heels.

His whole frame was vibrating, a low thump in his chest -- his pump, he supposed. It was like when his heart pounded ... it sounded loud to him for being within him, but there was no actual sound to betray it. His fans strained for a while, but he didn't shut down and felt a sliver of triumph as his fans slowed. He could _do_ this ... he just had to find out where he was, and why the hell the Autobots left him in a freakin' _ocean_. What the hell! That was just insulting!

Which did bring up the question of what had happened to him. There were only vague hints of what happened ... as a matter of fact, despite the fact that he was discovering that many of his memories were startlingly clear about a month after Mission City, apparently he hadn't been taking good records after that power surge that woke up Jazz. Or, was it possible that the same way he had conked out due to the transfer, it had scrambled his ability to remember things?

Ugh. Science, biology, mechanics -- whichever one it was that applied to him? Still, not his strongest subject. His strongest subject was ... er, he didn't actually seem to have one. Hmm.

Sam carefully shifted, taking in his surroundings once more before he leaned over and carefully braced himself against the ground and began to stand. Which should have been easy, but really, all he got was a head-first trip back into the river. He flailed in panic for a while before he remembered he didn't need to breathe, then had to fight off another panic attack, and finally flopped around in the shallows in a slightly more coordinated manner before he managed to straighten himself up and take a few tentative steps. All the equilibrium calibrators in the world couldn't help a human work a giant electronic body, so he was more than a little unsteady on his new feet.

Luckily, it seemed that his experiences in walking as a human wouldn't go completely to waste. It took him a moment to coordinate his body, since it _was_ different, but subprograms took over after that and he moved freely. He wasn't graceful like the other bots, he noted that immediately. He wasn't mechanical and halting, just ... awkward. As if he wasn't working _his_ body. Which he wasn't, so that was that.

At a sort of lope -- he could probably run, but wasn't secure in his ability to keep on his feet -- he left the beach behind him, trying to ignore the slight squeal of his dry gears and the numbed sensors warning him about them. Salt and sand had gathered in his moving parts, grinding to a powder, and he was hardly properly lubricated to move comfortably.

Right now, even being a _car_ would be reassuring ... and that was where he was headed right now, even though he didn't have the first clue how to scan a car and imitate it.

Moving seemed to help him adjust, though. The more the body responded to him, just as if is were his own, the more secure he felt in it. It wasn't until he stopped paying attention to where he was setting his feet ... claw ... things that he realized that he was hearing an awful lot of whirl-clicking in his legs and came to an abrupt stop that nearly made him fall on his face. Sparing one more 'glance' about with his scanners, he looked down at himself.

Aw, crap. He was the chasebot!

He flexed his hands in distress a few times. Now that he was a little more accustomed to what he was going to see, it seemed a little less horrific. But he was definitely lacking the impressive hood-chest of most Cybertronians he was used to looking at, and his legs were rather long -- powerful. While he wasn't sure of his body yet, a check of his list of system-things implied there was a lot more machinery in them than he expected. He nervously raised a claw and tapped it restlessly against a plate that was situated where his pelvis would have been and cast a beseeching look toward the sky. (He was now too freaked to speak, anxious that whatever voice that came out would ... er, _giggle_.)

Alright, first thing first -- he was feeling jittery and would _really_ like to find some car to pretend to be. According to Bumblebee, it mattered very little what the outside or inside looked like; under the hood was the same thing for every Cybertronian -- the most efficient engine possible. Bumblebee's engine was just like Ironhide's engine was just like Optimus' engine, minus the size -- identical but congruent. Of course, because Bumblebee was more aerodynamic, he had less drag, and could therefore move quite a lot faster sooner ... or, well, that's how he made it sound, anyway.

That bit of information, coupled with his own panic and desperation, meant that Sam wasn't exactly feeling very picky. At this point, _anything_ that was familiar looking would do.

If only he knew how to scan something and trigger the transformation.

After a while, Sam started to realize that even if he wasn't terribly picky about his alt mode, he might have a bit of trouble. After all, size seemed to mean something about what kind of cars could be used, from what he'd seen as their alt modes preserved the size scale. That meant ... he searched through his internal information files. If Ratchet could find schematics, so could he.

Ah. Oh. Um. Apparently, Sam was ... smaller than he had originally thought. He was apparently looking for something about the size of a Miata, since he appeared to be exactly fifteen feet and two-point-three inches exactly. (How in the hell did he know that Bumblebee was sixteen feet and two-point-four inches exactly, anyway? He certainly didn't remember taking a _measuring tape_ to Bee, and he definately knew that he had no reason to know that Arcee was fourteen feet and two-point-four iches ... ) Where was he going to find something like _that_?

At first, he thought the road he stumbled across might help, but it was apparently not one traveled _often_.

Not straying far from the it, Sam regularly flickered through the different sets of visual fields he had, trying to make sure he wasn't going to stumble onto anything unexpected in the dark. To his relief, he could spot _raccoons_, so there was little chance of him happening unknowingly on a human. He was starting to get the hang of this walking thing, and flickering his scanners and the different layers of optical input. A person would think that it would give him a headache, but was actually fairly easy. The only thing he was having problems with was the fact that his _gears_ were aching horribly because he had nothing to ease the movement and he still had _junk_ in them from being in the ocean.

As it turned out, he wasn't terribly far from major civilization ... but he hadn't thought he was, anyway. It was hard to ignore the vibrations of industrial work, especially in the water. Now, he just had to find a car. Cars were popular in big cities. He also had to hide. That ... was not going to be as easy. And, of course, being on the beach off _America_ would have been too much to ask. He was off the beach of _England_. Fun times. Weren't cars smaller in England? ... weren't they also backwards? Or was that Japan?

He sincerely wished he was connected to the Internet.

Movies really sucked, by the way. They made that secret agent slipping-by-people thing look _easy_. Well, maybe it was easy if you were a six-foot movie star in a black suit, but sneaking around as a fifteen foot robot that wasn't the lightest thing on his feet? _Well, then_! Sam fretfully ducked behind a building as another car ambled by, then leaned out to watch after it.

Something in his head shifted, some sort of program activating, and the world _shifted_ -- or rather, his perception shifted, closing down into nothing but the vehicle, and then it went to _pieces_. Panels came off, the entire thing just began to peel apart and bare gears and the metal skeleton, plastic and metal and rubber all being dissected -- and he suddenly _understood_ how it all went together. Sam reeled, clutching his head as his vision snapped back to normal. He staggered a little, strongly reminded of his nightmares about being stuck inside on of the Autobots or Decepticons who transformed and squashed him -- only, well, it was less disturbing, because there was no ... er, gore involved.

Was that how they ... er, chose a vehicle to transform into? Apparently, as the program chugged away and then reported that the shape was 'incompatible'.

Lowering his hands from his head, he attempted to frown. His facial components moved, but whether or not he succeeded in _frowning_ ... it was strange that he had been so disoriented by the sudden influx of information, wasn't it? Well, it had seemed that most of his attention had gone to dismantling the vehicle in his head, but disorientation? Maybe this was one of the things that Bumblebee had never thought to share, or perhaps it was a matter of them _waiting_ until it was information that he actually needed ...?

Either way, it was good to know _now_, before he fell on his face while trying to find a suitable form ... the queer thought occurred to him that an Autobot tripping probably sounded rather like a _car crash_. The quiet whirl of gears warned him that his face ... facial ... part things were moving, and he snapped out of the daze and checked the streets. Sam wasn't _too_ familiar with the way that cities worked, but he had so far managed to stay out of heavily populated areas.

Now, where to find a lot of different cars, _quickly_? If he was in America, he'd find a highway, but that was like ... in the open, and he might be spotted (and one of the really weird things that he'd developed over the last months of knowing Bumblebee and the rest of them was that they wanted to remain _hidden_. Of course, he completely agreed at the moment, and again had to wonder if he was the equivalent to _naked_). Then where to find --?

A parking lot would work well, wouldn't it? Where do British people go at night? That was the million dollar question. Not that Sam could _do_ much with a million dollars right now, except pay someone to find him a car he could pretend to be. Maybe he should -- follow the lights?

-+-

'Follow the lights' turned our to be fairly good advice. Well, okay, maybe that was a matter of opinion, but he was getting a head of himself.

Sam had been becoming more and more depressed, the more cars he saw. It seemed that not many people _wanted_ vehicles as small as a Miata, because no matter how many he took in through his scanners, the program always came back with 'incompatible'. He had even begun to think about what was _smaller_ than a car and had started to convince himself that he'd gotten the worst of both worlds -- he was a chasebot who was going to be a _motorcycle_. The only appealing thing about chasebots was that they could be _cars_! That and actual weapons, but he had long since discovered that having them did not mean he could _access_ them. He was so far past wanting to go home that he was just desperately waiting to _wake up_.

That was when he almost literally stumbled across the fact that this strange world of Britain had _dealerships_. How had he not even _thought_ of looking for an alt mode at a dealership?

Sam had learned through trial and error that if he gripped cement too tightly, it had a tendency to _break off_. He forgot this time, however, waiting anxiously as his programs sliced apart the vehicle and worked the information over however it was that it did to figure out whether or not he could use it.

The program reported that the shape was 'applicable'.

Sam didn't believe it. If he wasn't being such a chicken at the moment, he might have started laughing in disbelief -- but he went through the motions anyway, gears whirling and clicking as his shoulders moved and he adjusted his stance, shaking his head. Then he actually took a real look at the vehicle in question, and completely believed that it was 'applicable'.

It was a goddamned Mini Cooper. Life just fucking _loved_ Sam, didn't it?

To be utterly honest, being caught completely alone while trying to learn to work his new body was a bit of a mixed blessing (he thought while his fans strained, inadvertently reminded that he was so much hollow metal and strange wires and he _couldn't breathe_). On one hand, it was all so very _confusing_. There was a lot of trial and error involved in trying to get the set of mathematical craziness that the Mini Cooper translated into 'Cybertronian' as to be something that he could actually use. Having another Cybertronian about (preferably Bumblebee, but a Ratchet would have been fine, too) to explain how to get all of those sets of numbers to apply to everything on the _outside_ would have been great.

On the other hand, he kept having panic attacks, and he rather liked looking like a fool where no one could see. No one liked to have their inadequacies aired for others to see.

So, yes, a Mini Cooper was far from Sam's first choice (although, what he would have chosen if he could have chosen _anything_ ... he wasn't sure). The fact remained that it was probably the only car he was going to find that would accommodate his size, and it _was_ a car, four wheels, not a motorcycle. The particular one he'd scanned was blue, and happened to have white racing stripes (and a white roof, what was up with that?) which was better than ... say, _pink_, which it could have easily been (or not. He didn't see any pink Minis out there on that lot, but he wasn't entirely sure there wasn't one _somewhere_).

The fact remained that Sam was running across some very curious issues -- namely: the difference between 'possible' and 'Sam being able to do it'. These two concepts were not the best of friends, he found out. Why could he _not_ use this apparently perfectly acceptable data and transform? He'd really ... really like to be something a little more familiar than a bipedal robot, and he was pretty sure that the ... that his programing really wanted to transform as well. He still felt _vulnerable_ ... and personally, he was hoping that some color might change his appearance a little -- take away the sharp edges. Maybe.

Having determined that he wasn't going to be transforming any time soon, Sam had left the dealership behind and found what he hoped was an abandoned area to sulk in, sitting awkwardly. Robots _could_ sit, it seemed, but he wasn't looking forward to trying to sit on anything other than concrete -- he imagined that his weight would make dirt get in his gears. He ran unsteady finger-claws over the broader bits of armor as he tried to puzzle out how to get all those numbers to translate into something he could use to transform.

It seemed to work like magic, a few hours later. He'd done a few different things (wanting at stuff, since that had worked before), when his search function seemed to finally locate the thing he needed to want _at_. Then little programs had flickered to life and cut the mathematical craziness into little data bytes and Sam spent a few minutes feeding it into some problem-function -- an _algorithm_, in a way that it didn't report that the resulting solution was 'nonfunctional'. Then Sam actually tried to transform.

Yeah. Wow. He didn't know it was possible to fudge it up that badly, because within the first few moves -- within the first few major shifts of his ... body parts, he just ... failed. Big time. So Sam spent the next while gutting out the mathematical craziness until he had something that ... well, basically, he'd be a car, but the thing wouldn't even have a _radio_ of any sort. He resolved to change that, just as soon as he got a hang of this transforming thing, because Bumblebee had a radio _and_ little review-mirror dangles.

Then he fed that information into the algorithm (a little quicker this time), and tried to transform. The good news was that he made it into the transformation a lot further. If by further, a person meant that a third of the way through he was ready to start screaming in a blind panic and got shunted into hibernation mode. Even though transforming seemed to be a lot like doing fractions with a Ti-81 scientific calculator, Sam was not going to be transforming any time soon. Not when he was having flashbacks to that nightmare that taught him about transforming in the first place. The snap-crackle of his body being mauled inside the cab and the pop of his organs and head was not something that could be easily bypassed.

So, yes, perhaps he could be excused for freaking the fuck out so badly that he not only ended up in a tangled mess, he ended up in an _unconscious_ tangled mess. Thankfully, reversing back to his bipedal form wasn't nearly as bad.

It took a while to gather his courage to try again, if only because the he had suffered something similar with his inability to breathe in the ocean and because the need to become something that could blend in was strong. Still, by the time he finished his fifth attempt at transforming, he simply couldn't take it anymore -- he was clattering almost constantly, having become a shivering wreck of metal. Sam decided that he deserved a gold fucking star for even keeping with it so long, and crawled off to go hide until tomorrow.

It was about then that he realized he didn't know where to _hide_. Whatever city he was in, it sat off the ocean, not far from where he woke up, but he didn't think it would work to go back into the water -- he remembered the warnings that drove him to leave it to begin with, that his joints (painful as they were, far too hot from friction) would become further damaged, or might corrode ... he knew that salt water rotted metal quicker than anything.

Sam finally shoved himself to his feet and checked out his location. He had chosen to attempt transforming in a shipyard, of sorts, but he didn't think that he could wait out the daylight there. Or maybe he could, if he found something to hide _inside_?

Once that he felt assured that no one would find him in the corner of the warehouse that he had decided to occupy, Sam had little other to do all day than to try poking his insides from the inside. By which he meant to say that he was trying to discover what other neat things he had -- software and programs, right? Surely he had some sort of radio. He might be in England, but -- hell, if customer service could be in India, he should still be able to, say, call his mom, right? The only problem was ... well, he couldn't _find_ it. Why did life have to hate him so much?

Then what about those weapons he was so insistent on? Good God, don't tell him that something was wrong with his _weapons_.

It wasn't until he held out his arm to see if he could activate it or however it worked that he took a good look at the glossy metal and realized that there were some structures that he didn't remember being on the schematics Ratchet had drawn up for him. After staring at his mechanical limb (and feeling slightly awed and fascinated in spite of himself), he remembered that he was a shorter than he thought he was supposed to be. Now, Sam wasn't an encyclopedia of cars, but he thought he remembered some notation on the chasebot schematics that mentioned that he'd just have to find something just slightly smaller than Bumblebee's Camaro to turn into. (Granted, at the time he dismissed that, because he knew there were a fair amount of cars that weren't as big as the pony car.) But in reality, he barely found even _one_ vehicle he could transform into, and that was a freaking Mini Cooper, and Sam was not so forgetful that he didn't remember that there had been some heist film that practically celebrated the Mini's sheer lack of size by running three of them around halls and in a subway.

His current shape was apparently nothing like the chasebot that he _should_ be. What kind of weapons _did_ he have?!

Sam's frantic thoughts seemed to do some good, though, since they set off some more things inside his head -- helmet -- CPU? Anyway, they set off another search through his software, activating programs as they went. It let him know that he still had that strange 'signature structure' that had occupied both the minibot and the out-of-date schematics of the chasebot. But now that he was living it, he got a better idea of what it was -- cables that lead from his arms through his chest to some sort of ... box structure in his ... hip-pelvis-area-joint-thing. For that matter ...

He tried as best as he could to take in the entirety of his body. After a second, he decided that he was built ... much different than what he had expected. He seemed a lot bulkier across the shoulders than he recalled -- or, he described it as 'bulky', but it was honestly just extraneous metal ... random structures that apparently served no purpose. Well, no other purpose but to balance out the obvious extra work that had gone into fitting so many gears into his legs. Sam, being human sized among a dozen giant robots, felt that he had a pretty informed opinion on their leg structures, and his were ... just different. There were obvious additional gears, pistons -- whatever they were called, and he had this stuff attached to his upper body that seemed to help ... well, not make them look so obvious, the way they were with Arcee.

And importantly, he seemed to have cannons on his arms. Which was good -- awesome, because he really felt like he needed them. Seriously. The only problem? He wasn't sure he could actually _use_ them, and guns did squat for good if he couldn't even shoot the damned thing.

Somewhat aware of the noise of humanity waking up in the distance, Sam settled down against the floor and wall, aware that he had to wait for darkness ... and wondering what it would be like to live a life that didn't require sleep.

-+-

Sam abruptly came back to himself exactly thirteen hours later. He knew that even before his visuals came online and before he even made the connection to all of this sudden information and the lack of it and reasoned that for a being that didn't require sleep, he sure had just woken up.

And experienced Cybertronian dreams for the first time. His ... what had Bee called it? In ... Involuntary Video Remember ... no, Recall? His IVR had actually been ... well, boring and meaningless. It had been a few hours of him skateboarding around the Autobot base. He had spent several hours doing that during the time that Arcee had first shown up and she and Bee were being all ... buddy-buddy. Sam resolved to forget about it, for several uncomfortably obvious reasons.

After taking a look around the warehouse and determining it safe, Sam stirred from his cardboard sanctuary and shakily made it to his feet. It took him a moment to familiarize himself with his own controls. _Please, please-please-please don't let this mean I'm gonna have to do this every time I want to __**stand**__,_ he begged silently -- electricity shooting across circuits that he could somehow feel. He hesitated in an awkward crouch as he tried to remember if he had felt that before, and with the new technology that recorded nearly ever minute of his day, he knew that he hadn't.

Did that have something to do with his IVR? What had Bumblebee said -- it was like Defrag? Sam was no computer wiz, but ... he was fairly certain that even a defrag shouldn't have made him _more_ sensitive ... work faster? Yes. Wake up new programs? No way in hell.

He nervously completed the trip (it was a trip, of sorts. For some reason, he never truly noticed how much further from the ground he was, now) to a standing position, and then started for the door -- this caused some trouble, as he tried to take a nose dive into the floor, and barely stopped himself. After all, there was no way that a cement floor would be as forgiving as a stream bed, and even through he'd seen all of the Autobots flung around, he didn't trust his ... _body_ to be that resilient. Sure, some cars could crash and continue working, but he had a feeling that he was made of several thousand (perhaps even millions) more small moveable parts than a car was.

Sam's next few steps were slow and tentative. He moved carefully, feeling like an idiot and thankful no one was around to see him wobble with his arms thrust out for balance. By the time he made it to the door, he was feeling slightly more secure, and moving faster. He dipped a few claws into the groove made for human hands and lifted the door, stepping outside. It was probably a loading dock for a semi, or something similar, but it was convienently sized for all fifteen feet of Sam.

Haha -- Sambot. Oh wow.

His fans flickered on miniseconds before another panic attack, and Sam waited it out unmoving, gears straining and clattering faintly. The only good thing about being metal was that he recovered more seamlessly from a panic attack than he had when he was -- was himself, or human -- whatever. A sense of disorientation accompanied the unexpected memory of the five or so he'd had as a child the one time he had been in a school play. (It was strange, he thought -- the things he had made himself forget out of embarrassment, only to remember now that he missed being ... _flesh_, skin and bone.)

Sam crept into the dock yard, feeling slightly hyper alert -- he certainly felt more aware than he had yesterday ... last night. Once he determined that he was as alone as he could possibly be in a city, he settled into a still position, aware that he should try transforming again (wanting to try ... or rather: wanting to succeed). The memory of last night stuck with him, however, and the remnants of his nightmare. His brain must of been metal when he'd had it -- he remembered it too clear (or was he simply letting his imagination run away with him again? It was hard to tell, sometimes).

He stood motionless for maybe thirty minutes before he actually convinced himself to try again. It went no better than last time, and he had another panic attack, fans hot within him as they pulled air in through gaps in armor and hardware and blew the hot out through vents formed especially for such a purpose. He hysterically thought that he sounded just like one of Miles' old computers, only weeks before they'd burn out.

Miles.

Sam hunkered in the best imitation of a curl that he could (a human thing, apparently, since his body was too obviously not meant to rest that way: he could feel joints straining as several hundred pounds of metal rested awkwardly against them, though programs assured him the joints could take the strain), claws curled over the irregular shape of his head. He had told Miles that he was dying, or something like it, and Mikaela -- who knew what she knew? And he was alone in England, an entire ocean away from _everyone_ and _everything he knew_. Here he was, flailing about in this metal wreck, frightened by his own body and not even considering everything he _should_, being stupid and useless and -- and he _wasn't_ a problem solver, he never was, goddamn it, how many times had his mother fondly reflected on the fact that he had hammered the square peg through the round hole? He wasn't a problem solver, but hell, he might not even be _himself_, and he had to _get through this_, and _get back_ to everyone (Mikaela, and Miles, and _Bee_) --

and the hell with it. Fuck it. He was getting back and he was telling Miles, because Miles _loved_ his retarded sci-fi and he'd probably _kill_ for a chance to meet aliens, and hell, he might insist for a while that Bumblebee had a little man driving him like that one alien in MIB2, but who cared? He'd come around eventually, right?

So Sam just needed to _get through this_. He needed to _transform_, even if it was into some retarded little _Mini Cooper_, and get back to America, and that meant _problem solving_.

Alright. Okay then. Transforming scared the fuck out of him, and avoiding it wasn't possible. Then what?

He lowered his hands and lifted his head, taking in the moon-and-street-light stricken scene of the empty concrete yard. It wasn't until he tuned into the scene and actually began paying attention that he realized that there was something _wrong_ with his fans. They were -- ... they were mimicking breathing, as creepy as it sounded. Before, they had kept him from suffering the Giant Robot Alien version of the Blue Screen of Death, but ... oh, wow, what the fuck? First, they spun one way, then went into reverse -- and, well, that might work well for a large creature, but Sam was starting to get all sorts of warnings. They were generating more heat, and weren't actually fulfilling their purpose, so he was starting to overheat. He actually _felt hot_. (But hadn't Mikaela said that they only felt extremes of temperature, and then as pain, or was Sam's brain _translating_ the warnings into something he was _familiar_ with?)

That completely derailed him for some time, trying to undo whatever had started them to cycle that way, but Sam was not _that_ computer savvy and he had to just keep _wanting_ them off and sitting there until the heat dissipated. By the time that happened, he was more frustrated than frightened, and tried to transform again -- failed, again, and lurched to his feet, pacing and feeling more thwarted just because he had nothing to strike out at. If transforming freaked him out so badly that he messed it up so bad, then what? Was he going to just ... haunt some shipyard for the rest of his years -- centuries? Alone, in freaking _England_? This was worse than some of the video games he had played that he never got past the first level because the clues on how to get through it were so obscure that he couldn't figure it out without looking up some sort of guide online!

Alright, alright, so -- what did he do when he had to do something that terrified him? He -- either ran from it, or did it fast, right? Well, what good that does! He couldn't do either of those, so what was he -- ... wait, run from it, or did it fast ... or, perhaps, he did it very slowly? Like the few times he had been up late on some stupid scary web site, then realized it was three in the morning and he had to leave the safety of the computer behind and either get ready for bed, or go to the bathroom. He did it all very slowly, watching the shadows, pausing often.

Could he transform slowly?

Familiar with the process by now, Sam easily triggered the search function in his processor, and bent all of his attention to that. If he could find the thing that made him transform, he could possibly ... change it, make it _work_ somehow. After he rifled through a few unfamiliar things, one of which he thought might have been what hijacked his head and disoriented him while it sliced cars apart, Sam discovered that the important part of what allowed a Cybertronian to transform was a mathematical equation. On hindsight, this made a lot of sense, considering his scanning program thing turned the Mini into a bunch of numbers, but ...

At least Sam was able to isolate and discard the data he had entered himself -- everything that had to do with the Mini. That wasn't what he was interested in, after all -- it was if there was a _time_ function, and if he could write one in (though, having never been very strong in math or science ... ). It took a long moment, because Sam was looking for seconds of sort, remembering how fast Bumblebee could transform, when he really should have been looking for the units that originated from the wrong-time-device, that was probably a chronometer in Cybertronian time. (This made sense, also in hindsight. Why Sam had originally assumed that even super advanced alien robots worked with flawed human measurements of time ... well, Sam's brain worked in mysterious ways, it seemed.)

The original entry was six thousand and twenty four of those miniseconds. In a vague attempt to be somewhat accurate or at least mathematical about the entire subject, Sam estimated that he made it a third of the way into the transformation before freaking out too badly, and therefore three was a good number to multiply that time by -- then decided a little longer _couldn't_ hurt, and rounded the number off to twenty-four thousand and one hundred miniseconds. His ego might not take kindly to this change, when he eyeballed it, but he figured that he could try to trim it down over time, and that no one could get off the couch and run five miles straight off, anyway.

The one good thing about all those failures was that Sam already knew what pose was ideal for starting the transformation from a bipedal form toward the car. He got ready, mentally crossed his fingers (he wasn't sure his claws would bend that way), and triggered it.

All across his body, things loosened -- like a hood latch releasing, and a thousand whirling gears kicked into gear, spinning away as all sorts of small bits shifted even as the larger parts began to move. His control slipped away, as always, and his body began to move on it's own, locks releasing to allow joints to reverse and entire parts of him to relocate. Warnings flashed to life, blaring over the chatter of his busy processor, warning of the sudden plunge his energy levels were taking, and Sam's spare attention focused completely on the active measurements of his power, anxiety rising at the cold hard facts of the dangerously low levels he was headed for.

He was just getting ready to panic enough to interrupt the entire process and end up a pile of quivering scrap when he landed hard against the cement and bounced. Sam frantically demanded attention from his exceptionally busy circuits, and realized that he'd just landed on his wheels.

_Holy crap, he had wheels_!

The blaring warning of his power levels was ignored in favor of gaping in awe as glass (it wasn't glass, he didn't know what the hell it was, but it wasn't _glass_) formed across the gaps of his doors and windshield, and he would have flinched if he could as the final touches snapped a metal cover over his gas tank (his intake valve, apparently), and the arms of newly made windshield wipers snapped down at the newly finished windshield. The glass connected to the roof just as it clacked into place and the formed-less-than-miniseconds-before new rubber popped against the clear material.

Sam might have continued to hang still and gape in awe for a while if the frantic warnings stopped being the equivalent of 'plug in now or lose your data' and became enforced hibernation. For the second time in less than twenty four hours, Sam went dormant as normal Cybertronian energy abandoned his wires and Spark energy spilled out through them instead.

-+-

There was no obvious sign of anything happening, but just because nothing appeared strange to human eyes did not mean that there was _nothing_ happening. As a matter of fact, for the first time in the last lunar cycle, higher processors received viable energy as the power-saving state was triggered off. For a long moment, the car was still as information rocketed from one corner of an alien consciousness to another, analyzed, turned over, filed and considered.

For the last several lunar cycles, it had been cognizant of a vague impulse to leave fairly familiar haunts and travel a certain direction. Such things were not unheard of, though the science behind the phenomena was weak as best and it labeled as superstition at worse. With a determination that was congruent to the strength of such, it had allowed itself to drift that way -- far from working toward the destination that must be held in mind, but not resisting it as some would.

Tonight, the vague impulse sharpened into a certainty. It _must_ arrive at the destination -- it was now something to be worked toward with the exception of _nothing_. Considering that it had little to discourage it from following it out to the end, the engine hidden within deceptively smooth metal rumbled to life ...

... and a second, next to it, did so as if synchronized. (There was little 'as if'. Synchronization was easier to handle than it was to be forcibly separate.) With a lazy crunch of miscellany trapped between the hard floor and the black material it had mimicked, the sleek vehicle pulled out of the yellow painted square, followed by the second. The impulse was strong, now, but the urgency was not betrayed by their speed.

Woe befall any of these strange little soft things that stood between them and that destination. It may be quicker to avoid trouble than to run over it, but it was by far quickest to run over trouble than to _reason_ with it. It did not care what any others said -- language was not a sign of intelligence ... or if it was, it did not bar _madness_ ...

.... and madness was rife, on this horrid little round organic dirt ball.

* * *

- I'm not going to be doing intermissions -- half because I can't go on LJ right now, and half because I decided that fail-writing was fail.

- RE: ENGLAND - Since I was reminded of how extremely vague I was on details, and I've pretty much decided that the Decepticons will never get a PoV piece, this is the 411: Megatron died, and so Starscream's buddy, Skywarp, who had divorced Starscream as a friend when he went off with Megs, came back around. Starscream convinced his buddy to kidnap Sam, since a teleporter could do that and escape without retaliation from the Autobots. Only Sam did to Skywarp what he did to Prime, crashing them into the ocean. Without a Jazz for the energy to go into, it jumpstarted the conversion, and eventually Skywarp recovered and showed up again, but everyone assumes Sam is dead.

- OMG Y A MINI? I chose a Mini for a few reasons -- it's a small car, it's dorky, and I love 'em. However, it won't be Sam's final form, because ... because. BOY HAS DREAM! IS DELICATE DREAM. As to why he couldn't get anything else to scan for him ... well, to be painfully honest, I was handwaving. This is my handwave: Sam is a very unconfigurated mech, very unprepared for transforming. While a Bumblebee can pretend to be a very old car, he's got experience. Sam needed something much more similar to himself for his first transformation, and his software knows it. That's why it's a brand-new Mini.


	13. Out of the Frying Pan

**Chapter Twelve: Out of the Frying Pan  
**Grudgingly, he 'started' his engine (or rather, he made a car noise ... which ... ha ha, was rather like a kid going 'vroom vroom', now that he thought about it)

-+-

It was shortly before dawn that Sam had scraped together enough energy to escape hibernation. It wasn't much -- it was hardly anything: he was still getting the equivalent of the 'plug in now or lose your data' message, but he knew that finding a brand-new Mini in an otherwise ignored section of the dockyard would only cause trouble. He also knew he had to drive out of there but -- problem. He was _blind_! Totally and completely!

_Wait, wait wait, calm down._ Sam reflected back to that strange nameless time before he stood in the ocean and remembered who he was. He had echolocation._ And ... hmm. Ah, there we go; thank you very much, Deus en la machine or -- whatever. Okay, scanners._ A pause before he snickered silently. Sorry, it was just --- Giant Alien robots. And _scanners_? Mental images of Bumblebee behind a cash register was not healthy for Sam's mind, thanks anyway. Alright then. He was pretty comfortable and familiar with the process of activating things by now, considering that he had lots of practice with his transformation sequence, so he began to haphazardly turn things on.

And_ whoa -- whoa, whoa, whoa! Too much, too much _... he turned some of them off, then experimentally began to alter which ones he kept on (much as he had blocked out bits of his optics) until the information he was getting was something he was vaguely familiar with. Glass was apparently more helpful than he'd ever realized ... and no wonder Bumblebee hadn't liked him touching his windows. Whatever the substance was that created the illusion of glass, it was so receptive to ... everything that it all basically served as another set of eyes. No quite, after all, a thin sheet of clear hard stuff wasn't nearly as complex as the Cybertronian optics, right? But it was pretty good. Sam was comfortable enough with it.

Which wasn't to say he was _comfortable_ with it, just that using it didn't make him spaz out like he'd been doing since he woke up in the ocean.

Alright. Now he could see, but he was horrendously low on power and conspicuous as hell, and the nagging desire to transform had turned into a nagging desire to remain _inconspicuous_. Therefore, he leapt at the chance to start driving. And man -- Bee was right. It was nothing like driving a car, stick shift or no. First of all -- he knew how to turn on a car. How did he turn on himself? (Okay, ignoring the additional connotations of that sentence, right?) He was asking the wrong question, though, wasn't he? He _was_ on. Bumblebee had given away enough times that the Cybertronian engine didn't need to make noise like a car engine to _go_. He just had to figure out -- he just had to turn his wheels, right? Alright. How? _Walking_ was hard enough!

_Aw, man_, echoed silently through wires, like the mute reading of the clock on a screen saver. By this time, Sam was starting to doubt whether or not he'd really be able to talk even if he was ready to find out what the hell happened to his voice. (Because, alright, he accepted the fact that chasebots were no more feminine than any other giant robot alien, but Arcee? Still sounded like a _woman_.) His power levels were steadily dropping, and he hadn't figured out how to _move_.

Right. Okay, so it was different from walking ... but that didn't mean that the programs wouldn't translate his desire to move, right? So, Sam told his body he was going to take a step -- and his right rear tire spun out, jerking his entire frame sideways a little. He froze, reflexively wincing -- the springs between him and the axle tightened and loosened with a creak, making his frame bounce. His next instinctive response was to hold up his hands, which made his front two tires spin, after which he froze for a moment. After determining that the domino effect was finished, he accidentally reflexively huffed and what actually happened was that his windshield wipers streaked across his windshield -- which of course set off another series of reactions as he _felt_ it happen.

It was sort of like rubbing his arm, though ... not. He couldn't really think of a humanoid comparison to what his windshield was, but it had the same connotations, he thought. This was -- so, _very_, very frustrating, but he forced himself to focus on what he was supposed to be doing, because the insistence that nagged at him that he must remain _inconspicuous_ was going to drive him into a blind panic if he didn't. So with as much speed as possible, he accessed the files that all the data he had _just_ accidentally accumulated had been sorted into and set about trying to recreate it.

Huffing was not comparative to his windshield wipers, though -- this time, his engine revved gently, hardly the amount of noise a computer would make. With a lot of concentration, he finally got all of his wheels to work in tandem, since it wasn't quite trying to walk, but not completely unlike it, and -- yeah. It took a lot of paying attention, especially to make sure that all of his wheels turned at the same time and at the same speed. And he was expected to go faster than five miles per hour? _That_ wasn't going to happen!

Despite Sam's doubts, however, he did painstakingly remove himself from the shipping yard and managed to find a parking lot to pass out in -- which was exactly what he did.

The good news was that the next time Sam came around, he had enough power to do more than move less than a mile before exhausting himself. The bad news? Last time he had woken up, only sixty-something and some odd of those larger measurements of time had passed, and he now discovered that there was an even larger unit of time, and eight of those had passed!

It took some math, and matching the miniseconds to the movements of a bird searching for food on the parking lot nearby, but he figured that it had probably been several days. He was lucky he hadn't been _impounded_! (At least his original thought that the miniseconds were much smaller than a second was right. He certainly didn't think the bird was moving in slow motion.) But ... it was daytime, now, and a driverless car couldn't exactly just ... wander off during the daytime. And ... aw, Sam didn't have a radio. What the hell?

That was right, he had transformed using the least complex version that he could cut. He was lucky he still had _seats_ and a steering wheel! A steering wheel that was on completely the wrong side, what the hell? He considered that for a while, then paid a bit more attention to the nearby traffic. It seemed that the reason that his steering wheel was on the wrong side was because the English _drove_ on the wrong side. Sam was a bit alarmed at that, as he was used to America where they drove sensibly. Consulting his transformation algorithm informed him that he could reconfigure that issue the moment he scanned another Mini. Thankfully, the radio issue could be dealt with the moment he tried transforming again, since the original mathematical insanity was preserved in Sam's brain (circuits?). Earth computers with their easily corrupted software and their power surges were apparently good for something, after all. There was nothing like loosing a fifteen page essay and having to start from scratch to teach a kid to save-save-save and create backups of backups.

_Okay, the situation as it stands?_ Sam asked himself. His thoughts, masquerading as programs, computed and sent back the answer. _Alone in England, pretending to be a blue Mini Cooper, and an entire ocean away from everyone and everywhere I want to be._

Right, that wasn't depressing at all.

For what remained of that day, Sam very carefully dodged several things his inconvenient thoughts kept trying to present him with. (If Cybertronians could alter their body so extremely as to become _cars_, and could even mimic glass, paint, and rubber ... why couldn't they also alter their bipedal mode? If they constructed a 'humanoid' face for Optimus, hoping to keep the peace ... why wouldn't they take advantage of their very nature to make themselves look less dangerous than the Decepticons? And considering the way that all of Bumblebee's dozens of bits of armor formed the absolutely smooth shell of the Camaro, and that denied simple rearrangement because nothing, not even living metal could seal that completely, then ... how'd they get that way? Were they weapons of war, or ...

Or had the planet they lived on been so dangerous that they needed the ability to become something else so completely in seconds just to survive?)

He finally gave up and decided to get out of town. Increasing the noise made under his hood until it matched the frequency of the other cars that had passed nearby, he casually tried to leave ...

-- and driving from the inside was _a lot_ harder than Bumblebee made it seem. After backing into the car behind him and setting off it's alarm, his horn beeped in surprise and he quickly spun out, trying to leave the scene of the crime as swiftly as possible. Oh, sure, he clipped every other vehicle in the lot, but he got away.

And sort of forgot that they drove on the wrong side of the road, but as long as it was only _them_ getting in a pile up, and not him, that wasn't too bad.

So much for staying undercover.

-+-

The number of people who knew (he meant, _really_ knew, for _certain_) that alien war machines existed numbered under three hundred. Approximately two hundred and twenty of those were now defunct Sector Seven agents, thirty of them were military men who had fought beside them in Mission City, twenty were various officials of the government, another ten were various CIA intelligence, ten were computer geeks trying to create some sort of code unhackable by the aliens, one song-pirating hacker, two teenagers, and two very confused parents.

And possibly some guys in Afghanistan, but they didn't really know what they were looking at, and it had so far evaded capture.

After Mission City, life had gone on. William Lennox had gotten his leave, gotten to see little Annabelle for the first time in real life. But the government kept calling him, saying that 'hey, the enemy aliens are doing this' and trying to get his advice on killing them (the word 'Decepticons' was too surreal, and America never liked calling their enemy by name). Somewhere along the line, Will had become some sort of expert on killing giant robots. He and his crew. Probably because they were the only ones to have ever managed it without the help of an alien artifact. They called each other late at night on government-provided secure lines, while his wife was busy, and the joke always came up: "we fight giant robots, man. Hoo-ha!"

It was a nightmare that never stopped, something that haunted him worse than any of the young men and women who had been mislead or had grievances against America that he had killed. As terrible as Mission City had been ... he did not forget his first encounter with the Enemy ... the MH 53 that had landed and wiped out an entire base with the same sort of blasé negligence of a child playing 'Godzilla' with a city of building blocks.

_"Many of us have died in our war,"_ Optimus Prime had said gravely, those giant hands set so gently on the railing that the aluminum was undented and unscratched, _"but there are more of my people out there ... and more Decepticons. They __**will**__ come."_

They were facing a hostile alien invasion, and there would be no warning. Prime had been so gravely serious, saying that his arrival with his crew had been messy and obvious because there had been no time to lose. But one of the aliens who wanted to enter the atmosphere, to land unnoticed, could easily do so. After all, the arrival of the Enemy and the kid's Camaro had gone completely unnoticed.

_"You have not yet met our secret operatives. Bumblebee is skillful, but even he is not our best spy. We had scattered among the stars ... sparing any we could toward the search for the All Spark ... "_

And Will had a wife of two years, and a daughter that he had brought into this world not knowing the changes that would come ... that Humanity would be facing extinction by aliens whose technology they had stolen, and not even effectively. It was not a question of _would_ he stop fighting in the Middle East, and focus on the threat that they did not dare even speak of ... though the government asked. They asked, but he didn't see how he _couldn't_ ... it was the difference between civil war and complete _annihilation_. Though the war in the Middle East continued, the secret war for humanity's survival took precedence.

But when S7 showed up again, despite having been disbanded, the government stepped in to help the 'friendlies', proposing an alliance that the aliens accepted with no show of reluctance. And so they needed a go-between to communicate, to pass messages back and forth ... and Lennox was their man. Unfortunately. Oh, he was _so pissed_ about it, too. He had a wife and _daughter_, people! A few months was _not enough_!

He couldn't risk his family around them, after all. Ratchet could say their radiation was harmless for humans all he wanted to, but Annabelle was a _baby_. And besides, they'd made an old abandoned nuclear testing site their base. Sure, sure, it had never actually been used, and it was safe, but ... come on. _Nuclear testing facility_. That just _sounded_ wrong.

And sure, he understood that the aliens were under attack, that the kid, Sam, had been killed, the parents traumatized, the girl little better, and that basically the aliens wouldn't listen to very many people -- and he happened to be _one_ of the ones they _would_ hear out, for whatever strange reason that was. He understood all of that, and that they did have to find someone that they'd listen to because who in the world would be stupid enough to argue with a twenty-foot-tall three-ton machine with cannons? Just ... why did it have to be _him_?

It was true that he was a captain, but ... did being a captain seriously include trying to reign in giant robots that acted like _three-year olds_?

"No, no, _put that down_," he shouted, breaking out into a jog in his rush to intercept the candy-blue alien currently looking keen to take apart one of the guys' -- Jim? -- humvee. They had confiscated all of the S7 resources when it had been disbanded, and though Will had the suspicion that there was a lot of stuff they hadn't known was missing because it had never been recorded, they'd gotten a hold of the humvees. Jim was standing back at a safe distance, hands on his head with a wounded expression, jaw a little slack and his eyes bright. Jim really, really liked his humvee, and yes, there were jokes made about it, only -- well, those jokes had gotten a little awkward recently, what with ... well.

The alien paused, cocking it's head at him in a disturbing manner. At least _this_ one didn't have one of those uncanny faces on it -- it still had the somewhat less uncanny vague configuration of a face that the others used to. "But it's making a strange sound," it protested in high tones -- the whiny bitchy pitches of preteen girls everywhere.

"I don't -- _no_. Just no, alright? It's _supposed_ to sound like that!"

It -- she? -- straightened, just a little taller than Will himself. Tapping a claw thoughtfully against it's lower face, it eventually brightened. "Oh -- _duh_, Elita told me that the machines here are noisy. Oops."

Will just might kill himself if his daughter_ ever_ sounded like that. Nothing ... ugh, so much was disturbing about the aliens, but this one -- star bright? Moonlight? Whatever, was a good example of many of the very disturbing things about them. Having Barbie's voice come out of something that looked like a bipedal Matrix machine was just ... aw, what the fuck. When they had human-like faces, that was freakish -- but when they didn't, then it was still the disorientation of sensing intelligence in something that was just ... so utterly _alien_. (Nearly every time he turned around, he remembered Epps saying that it _looked_ at him.)

"Just," he said, putting his hands up to sort of ... push at the air forcefully, "leave everything alone, okay? It _doesn't_ need to be fixed ..."

"Will!" someone shouted, approaching at a run. "Will, Witwicky parents! Nine O' clock!"

"Dammit," he muttered, turning a quick circle and sweeping his gaze over the entire lot of cars. Most of them tended to remain in those slightly more compact forms, unless they were the smaller robots, such as the little creepy Kawasaki Ninja and -- "Where's the kid's Camaro?" he demanded.

Numerous vehicles blinked in understated ways -- hazard lights, turn signals, other guide lights if they had them -- and Will got that disconcerting sense of murmuring, even though they were all completely silent. Not that they _always_ put on a light show when they talked to each other silently, but sometimes they did and it was _really fucking disturbing_. And Will got the irritating feeling that was the _whole point_. Aliens. Jerks of the universe. At least these didn't seem keen on probing anyone.

Then the nearest vehicle -- a military humvee, of course, he remembered when they'd gone out to meet the newest one making landfall, and he'd landed _right on_ one of the humvees and promptly transformed into the second, eventually making apologetic remarks once he knew English -- spoke up. "He should be coming in now, Will."

Dammit, he wasn't ever going to get used to this talking car stuff. Speak of the devil, though --

The dark maroon '76 Camaro slid quietly around the corner, emerging from the lower level parking lot, and immediately began to transform. That -- that was honestly even creepier, and no, Will did not have a five year old inside of him that was demanding an alien robot for Christmas. Honestly. Christ -- what was it about transforming? Will could easily remember that the aliens were _creepy_ and just trouble up until they decided to shift modes, and then it was like all of the toy commercials right around Christmas when he was a kid.

Then the Camaro was standing and Will could remember that _this one_ was the creepiest of the lot of them. What had really freaked him out so horribly when he had met up with them again was that they had gotten _human faces_ -- okay, so they'd already pretty much had human_ish_ faces, but they had been unrealistic and like ... _cartoons_, before, but now they had metal faces that actually looked and moved like honest human faces and -- _uragh!_ And all of the human faces were -- just, _freaky_, because in a way they were almost anonymous and _identical_ (and _dead_), but in another strange way, they were also a little individualized. Some aliens displayed a slightly more prominent chin, or thicker brow, or a more complex forehead, and some where darker gray and some were silver, and even then some were a matte and some were nearly chrome.

And as freaky as Will and everyone else thought the faces were, and how much he should have been more comfortable with the Camaro because it _didn't_ have one, like the Kawasaki didn't have one, he wasn't. But he thought that it had less to do with how the Camaro _looked_ and more to do with ... well, perhaps his wife knew what she was saying when she told him that it was a little like _that_ was the only one of the lot of them that actually saw the humans as intelligent creatures and individual in their own right.

Or perhaps Will was right when he got the feeling that it was more that the robot saw them less as -- as strange little creatures, and more as a maybe-enemy. Either way, Will didn't hold it against it ... he'd be a little pissed, too, if he'd ended up as the alien in Area Fifty-One. It wasn't likely the alien would forget that soon.

Not even looking at anyone but for the Witwicky parents, the Camaro waved in that strangely human 'alright, alright, I'm here already' way and moved to intercept the parents just as they came through the hanger door. With a little relief, Will put that out of his mind -- the last thing he really wanted to deal with was two pissed off and grieving parents and their weird little ... computer-alien-thing. The only reason he even allowed those two things on base with the rest of the aliens was because it was the communication go-between for the Camaro. (It was weird -- he vaguely thought he remembered the Camaro talking, but he couldn't remember a specific event ... it certainly hadn't when the kid had saved it from S7.)

"Will," another man said -- yet another issue begging for his attention. What was _with_ today? "Will, one of them wants to speak to you -- the shiny gold one."

Will cast a look over the motley group and made a wild guess. "The Jaguar?" he asked. There were a few that could have been called 'gold', but the Jaguar was the only one that the _manufacture_ would call gold.

"Yeah, that one."

Shit. He stared balefully over to the corner that had the Jaguar and the Mazda and the white Hummer. They were who the little Ninja _normally_ hung with, but sometimes she went off and got in trouble and Will was _not_ looking forward to having to listen to the Jaguar lecture him about how the Ninja was a naturally curious robot and should be indulged and yadda-yadda-yadda. But Will was now the liaison between the robots and humanity, so he reluctantly began the march over there as if he was going to his death.

A few times in the war, Will _had_ been marching to what he was sure was his death, but he'd rather do that than this, to be honest.

"What can I do for you?" he asked, trying not to make it sound like he'd forgotten the Jaguar's name. He really did try to keep up with them, but -- it would be easier if they were named Bill and Joe and Mary Beth, or something like that. The only one he was sure he had assigned the right name was Optimus Prime, but that was because Prime often ended up speaking with politicians at length, and that was enough to blow _anyone's_ mind.

"I wish to speak to you about some of the humans who are 'in the loop', so to speak," the Jaguar said, and _creepy, creepy, creepy_. Female voice. That made this one -- what was it? Elite one?

"Alright," he said, "what about them?"

"I would prefer to do this in privacy. Would you like to get in my cab?"

The answer was _fuck no_. "I'm not entirely comfortable with that," he said, looking around. "We could -- there's a room that should be private."

"Very well," she said, "lead the way."

Yeah, easier said than done. Will took another look around to gauge the best way to get through the mess of cars, since they seemed to park wherever in the hell they wanted to without regard for normal flow of traffic, and set off. It was a bit eerie, and Will normally liked to think of himself as the man of his family and accustomed at least a little with alien robots, but -- Holy fucking shit. Being followed by a car without a driver was _creepy_. It set all the hairs on the back of his neck on edge, and for a surreal moment, he glanced out at all of the empty cars moving around on their own and thought to himself: _this was what insanity was_.

Then the moment broke, and he reached the garage-shaped door and hit the button that made it begin to scroll up. It had amused the hell out of the guys to rebuild the base as if the aliens really were cars, taking out normal doors and replacing them with electric garage doors and car lifts and those kinds of things.

The joke was on them, because the aliens accessed the doors and lifts remotely and got around the base quite well.

He closed the doors behind him, looking back at the car. Nearly all of the aliens had picked our really awesome rides, being anything from the Jaguar in front of him, to the Pontiac to the Mustang with the tricked out sound system, and the ones that hadn't seemed to have been restricted by their sheer size. Well, all the same, Optimus Prime still cut an impressive figure, even if he was a big rig.

"Alright," he said, "this should be moderately private. Now what can I do for you?"

"Elita-One," the car said.

He blinked, then nodded. "Yeah, yeah, Elita-One. I knew it was something like that," he admitted, a little ashamed. "What can I do for you, Elita?"

"I have done some research on some of the humans who were allowed to know of our existence," Elita-One explained. "There are a few of them I am interested in speaking to. Optimus Prime and his group may not have thought so far ahead, for all of the initiative they have shown in creating the configuration of human faces with proper software to match."

Will wasn't sure he liked where this was going. He knew that the aliens could have that _not_-face one day and then the really eerie silver one the next, but to hear it said in such a way ... and at the same time, he had seen it. It took fifteen seconds for an alien to recover from a crash landing and unfold from the space-faring shape. It took five seconds to assume vehicle form, though he assumed they had to have a copy of such a vehicle nearby so that they knew how to put all the parts together. He had seen the insides of several of them, and from headlight to tailpipe, the aliens were _completely normal looking_.

Unless a person knew what to look for -- the tell-tale mark that indicated if they were Autobot or Decepticon.

"What do you wanna speak to them about?" he asked flatly.

"What you may not know about our abilities, William," she said, "is that we have the capacity to create a hologram."

Oh. _Oh_. _Oh shit_. "How good is the hologram?" he demanded. "Could you -- pretend you were a _building_?"

"We can cloak our form, to an extent," she admitted. "Pretending to be a building, as you so quaintly put it ... that would not be an easy feat, William. However, there are at least three of our kind that I consider skillful enough to manage such a thing."

"Great," he said weakly. "Would our --" he gestured uncertainly, "-- your --?"

"That depends greatly in the Cybertronian in question," Elita-One said evenly. "Most of us, yes, your technology would reveal even through such a hologram. Forgive us, William. We seem to have a hard time understanding that the true extent of our technology is still beyond humanity. You have managed to copy many of our most basic technologies so that you seem almost normal to us."

"Yeah," he said, "great. Alright. What about these holograms and these people?"

"As you might have been able to tell, we have a hard time comprehending your social structures and protocols. I have determined that it would be best, and easiest, if we had _humans_ design our holograms, both in face and in clothing. After engaging in much research, I've determined that the technological prowess of Glen Whitmann and Maggie Madsen would be best. Glen Whitmann has much experience in what you call 'video game characters', and designing a hologram would be much like that. As for Maggie Madsen, she shows a remarkable ability for humanity -- the ability to grasp and accept the impossible when it is reality. Such a skill would be useful. And finally, I wish for Mikaela Banes to aid them on this venture. As a maturing female of your species, she is still keen on what is acceptable and what is not. With these three working in tandem, I believe they will come up with acceptable holograms for us to use when interacting with other humans who may not be 'in the loop'."

Will _stared_. What kind of craziness was she talking about? "Okay, first of all, Maggies' working with the other hackers to build a firewall to keep guys like you _out_ of human business, and Glen is working to test it out, because if _he_ can break it, so can you. And you'll have to talk to Ratchet and Mikaela about her, because not only is she still grieving for Sam, Ratchet has gone off the deep end and adopted her or something. He's gone completely -- _ballistic_, like a -- hen with one chick." He had sadly grown up on farm, and had indeed seen the way a hen with one chick acted. She acted paranoid and pissy and _psychotic_, which was Ratchet from the 'r' to the 't' if you asked Will.

"Considering that such work will have to be downloaded, I am sure that it could be completed inside the medical bay, which would appease Ratchet," Elita-One said blithely. "Though I do agree that he acts as if he built her himself."

The things _that_ statement implied was enough to blow Will's mind, so he very carefully didn't think of it, because he needed all of his mental capacity at the moment. "What about the hackers, huh?" he asked skeptically.

"Unless I am very mistaken, your government failed to make them sign a contract that they would work solely on such a code, or that they would complete it within a certain amount of time," she said serenely. "And once asked, I am also certain that they will very readily agree."

Oh, these aliens played _dirty_. "And if the Decepticons decide to hack the government again and do something _really, really_ bad because that firewall wasn't in place because _you_ wanted a hologram?"

"I have spoke with Jazz," she said promptly, "and he has agreed to temporarily station himself at your Pentagon and guard your files. He has the skills necessary to repel any such attack from the Decepticons."

He blinked. "Jazz is the -- the Pontiac, right?" he asked. He vaguely remembered that, because one of his men had made a crack about how the mech had _jazzed_ the Solstice up by adding all these nonstandard features. "Isn't that Optimus Prime's _first Lieutenant _? Can you _do_ that?"

"I am Elita-One," she said, "of course I can. We are a law unto ourselves, which is why I am the leader, as Prime is the leader of his own people. We share a standard because we are allies, not because I am one of his soldiers. We are -- co-commanders, to term it roughly. Because I have endorsed such a thing, and Jazz has indicated that he is willing, Prime can not veto it."

Aliens. Just -- _aliens_. "Okay," he said, "if you're such a law unto yourself, why are you asking _me_ about these hackers and Mikaela, like I can stop you?"

"Because I am not one of your people, and especially am not an authority among them," she said. "You have different laws, and so I am asking this favor of you, that you make such a thing possible. Prime and I will take care of any objections that your government might raise."

It was amazing, he thought, that alien war machines could have such a firm grasp on human logic and yet be completely unable to apply it to themselves. On one hand, Elita-One did not understand what the purpose was of _not_ switching Jazz for the hackers when it would best suit their needs, but she could anticipate that the human officials would be _displeased_. She required their services, and there was no rule explicitly saying that it was not to be done, so she would obtain them with some compensation -- and putting the government in an awkward position. No one would want to say that Jazz _couldn't_ be allowed to protect the Pentagon computers because if a hacking occurred, then he would have to go into the computer to fight it off, and the government didn't want _any_ of the aliens in their files. But they wouldn't want to _say_ that, because that would be synonymous with _'We don't trust you'_ and that could prove disastrous (or maybe not, but who knew? and that was the entire point of the exercise of dealing with _aliens_).

Will could probably say it. He could put a stop to the entire thing, right here and now, before it even became a problem, before anything mess came of it. He could explain to Elita that the humans were still nervous about their alien allies, but then she might point out that it was the Autobots who were living on their planet and horrifically out numbered, and -- and Will thought, again, of Sector Seven hiding Megatron and filling the world with micro chips and airplanes and military weaponry that was unbelievable (and that was why, he thought, military science had advanced in leaps and bounds. They were stealing knowledge from a giant _war machine_). And he thought of how the Decepticons in Mission City just _kept getting up_, until finally the Banes girl arrived with the Camaro, and Sam's dead stare from inside that glass box.

And he said _fuck it_, to himself, just a little pissed off. Fuck it. Someone should have been monitoring S7, someone should have been guarding them, someone should have _made sure_. It was all their fault (somehow) that his little daughter, that precious little girl that his _wife_ had helped him achieve, was going to be in danger for the rest of her life _just because there were aliens and not all of them were friendly_. And he _might_ be able to say that Sam had been killed because he was _so much closer_ to the Autobots than anyone but Mikaela, that it was because he had destroy Megatron and the Cube, but he couldn't say that the _suddenness_ hadn't startled him. Sam was alive and then not even a second later, Sam was dead, and Will thought of _his_ daughter, and who she might turn out to be because of who _he_ was and who her _mother_ was, and -- "Okay," he said. "Let me make a few calls."

"I appreciate this, William," Elita-One said, "do not think I do not. I 'owe you one'."

But he didn't care about that. All he knew was that their alliance with the Autobots was going to change the face of humanity forever.

-+-

It took a few days, but Sam was getting a little bit more used to getting around as a sentient car. It was much rarer for him to have a wheel (or all four) trying to turn a different direction, and he had already attempted another transformation and succeeded with less grief than he had the first time. He'd even managed to go more than five miles an hour, and he had a radio! Well, it didn't work, but he still had one. That was something, right?

Yeah, he didn't think so, either.

Oh, and? It was raining. England, apparently, was the land of the rainy. Yay. (Christ -- if he thought driving was hard before, learning to not hydroplane was _unspeakable_. Remembering to keep his windshield wipers going and his headlights on at night wasn't any easier, either. He didn't need them for anything but to make everyone else think he was being driven, so it was fairly easy to forget.) His situation? Complete SNAFU. Not only was he totally failing at that whole 'problem solving' thing, but he was just ... _ugh_, life sucked. Hello, depression. Sam was fairly familiar with it, and wasn't pleased to see that unwelcome house guest come around again.

So he failed at problem solving _and_ he had managed to accidentally locate wifi. It was a personal connection, coming from a house. Sam _knew_ what it was ... after a while. The fact was that he hadn't know _what the fuck_ suddenly came in over his ... communications doohickeys. After a while, he figured it out ... and then figured out that being a giant walking super computer was _not_ like being a PC. No one downloaded a nice handy user-friendly operating system on him, and therefore he didn't know what to do with the connection that he was apparently receptive to. Despite hanging around there for a few days, he just couldn't work anything out, no matter how much he _thought_ at it, and therefore he had skulked off into the night and went to go recharge in the city. Random cars were less conspicuous there, and Sam seemed to need to recharge rather a lot.

Well, he wasn't sure if he _needed_ to, but he was really ... _really_ paranoid about his ever-unstable power indicator ... thing. It was kinda a lot like watching a reception indicator on a cell phone -- it goes up and down and up and suddenly it's _gone_ ...

With all of that dozing he was doing (a light recharge, since he had played games with Bumblebee and knew that sometimes the mech slept heavier than others and therefore he could, too), was it really _any_ surprise that he was carjacked? He had never gotten around to thinking about locking his doors, after all, so he was rudely awakened by someone grabbing his door handle (that tickled) and flinging his door open -- which was rather _rude_.

He was so startled and offended that the door snapped right back shut. The man didn't seem to notice, jerked the door open again, and jumped into the seat. While Sam was just sitting there, still disoriented from being shaken out of recharge and in shock over the complete and utter insanity of what was happening to him, the man leaned out the door and shouted in a heavily accented voice, "Mickey, this one! Hurry!"

A second man trotted quickly over to Sam, and to his meager scanners, they seemed to be suffering some difficulties. Both had run far, as evidenced by their heavy breathing, and were rather jumpy, as they kept glancing back down the road from where they came. The second man finally reached the door and jerked it open -- Sam almost managed to catch it and keep it shut, but he was too busy freaking out silently to keep it that way -- and climbed into Sam's cab and -- _oh dear God, no, no, no, no, no!_ He felt somewhere between violated and furious. And at a loss as to what he should try doing about it. No one could be expected to be too happy when they were forced to accept the fact that they really were going to be treated like a car.

And no, he wasn't any happier when the man in the driver's seat began to feel under the steering wheel. Sam jerked slightly in surprise and alarm, before popping his glove box open just to avoid being hot wired. He didn't know _how_ his Cybertronian innards would take to that, and wasn't exactly eager to find out, either. Luckily, Mickey happened to see into the glove box while Sam was distracted with holding the panel that was under his steering column tightly shut against the prying fingers and kicks, and he saw what Sam meant for him to see.

"Here, here, you idiot!" Mickey said, scrambling for the keys and shoving in his cohort's hands.

They fumbled with the keys, and Sam was afraid for a moment that they were going to _drop them_, and they'd go back to trying to hot wire him, but then the second man got a firm grip and jabbed the key into Sam's ignition. Needless to say, Sam was feeling extremely ill tempered by this time, and having the key jammed there like the time Miles' niece, Tamara, had jammed a too-small ring on Sam's finger while declaring them husband and wife (yes, that was why she loved to bother them), wasn't much of a mood improver. Sufficed to say that Sam hadn't liked being pushed around in life, and how that he was being treated like an inanimate object ...

Besides, having the guys in his cab and getting their hands all over his interior was just -- gross. It made his frame crawl a little. It was like having a fly land on his arm, with all of the germs that they carried around in mind.

The guy turned the key hard, but Sam wasn't feeling cooperative at all. They would just have to find some other car to steal, thanks anyway. He sat sullenly silent, right up until the guy started yelling, "come on! Come on!" and pumping the gas pedal.

That was more abuse than Sam really wanted to tolerate, especially internally, but he continued to sit still for a moment while he considered what he should do about it. He wasn't nearly as good of a driver as Bee was, and didn't think he could fling them out of his cab like that night. It was a bit like trying to drive for the first time again, honestly -- which, but the way? Learning how to drive on a stick-shift was murder. There were _so many_ times he killed the car because he couldn't move the pedals right.

Ironically, the Mini that he was now pretending to be was a stick-shift.

The guy pumped the gas pedal even harder, which _really_ got on his nerves, and he was feeling extremely jumpy about having these two guys inside ... well, inside him. _Ugh, gross!_

Grudgingly, he 'started' his engine (or rather, he made a car noise ... which ... ha ha, was rather like a kid going 'vroom vroom', now that he thought about it). This really didn't solve anything, as the guy began to jerk and pull harshly on things inside of Sam that he _really_ wish he wouldn't. Didn't this guy know that you're supposed to be nice to cars?

Still, the Cybertronian shape shifting ability was insanely complex, and because Sam didn't _fight_ it anymore, the man actually managed to drive him. That somehow even _more_ got on Sam's nerves, even though it was kind of nice since it have him a moment to just .... _boggle_ at everything. Just five minutes ago (figuratively, since he didn't know what minutes were, right now), he'd been sleeping, and now he was carjacked, and being driven by --

Now that they were within the confines of his metal frame, Sam focused his scanners on the bags. He was being driven by a pair of guys who were transporting a god awful amount of drugs and money, and had apparently decided that stealing a car might as well go with it. All of Sam's irritation flew out the window in face of this -- this sheer _insanity_. What the hell? Was he in a movie? Because Sam didn't think that things like that happened _in real life_!

Then again, his real life? Um, included alien robots, intergalactic wars, and turning into a freaking machine. Perhaps he did not have room to talk.

It was about that time that Mickey decided to have a fit. "Shit, shit, shit! Danny, here they come!" he yelped.

Sam's scanners reversed in shock while Danny started screaming about not yelling at him, because he was driving. Behind them, fishtailing around a corner, came a car with a rather specialized engine. Sam's scanners jostled and rearranged and the world snapped into a slightly clearer focus -- his drivers? Were being chased by someone in a Lamborghini. Sam felt a trembling snap of .... not quite terror, but a polite warning whispered that he was having a power surge, and maybe it was the robot version of adrenaline.

He had apparently been caught up in a car chase. Wait -- so, if this was a car chase, but he had been car_jacked_, then what happened to the two junkies' _first_ car ...?

Again, the sensors that were doing their best to give him a visual representation of what was going on reoriented themselves. This time, to the front and sides so that he could see what was going on. Unnoticed, Sam's doors tightened on their hinges as they narrowly avoided being smashed into by another car -- he didn't want to crash! Bumblebee could swear up and down that even in car mode, they were much sturdier than Earth machines, but he wasn't eager to find out how much so -- as a matter of fact --

Another power surge rushed through him as he merely wanted the driver control out of existence and took off on his own. This power surge seemed slightly different than the other ones, since a few more programs came online, but he didn't have much time to worry about them. Despite his little racing games with Bumblebee, he hadn't had a lot of practice driving in a way that wasn't the correct legal way, so ... well, he winced (a flash of his lights, a twitch of the wipers, the unnoticeable way his door hinges twitched) every time that something he did was ... not legal.

Behind him, the Lamborghini's engine -- rumbled was the wrong word, but the level of sound noticeably increased, in a very 'I'm gonna get you' way. In response, Sam put that extra power to use and increased his speed, dodging in and out of the traffic and snaking around corners. He was sure the Lamborghini was falling behind, and he hugged a corner to slid onto another street, feeling the first vicious burst of triumph: there was no way the Lamborghini would catch up to him now!

Which begged the question what was happening several hundred feet up the street from him, that a Lamborghini slid squealing sideways into the street that he had _just_ turned onto. It rocked slightly as it stopped sliding sideways, and the engine gunned with a threatening roar before it spun out, heading straight for him.

Sam panicked, admittedly. He momentarily lost control of (ha ha, oh wow) himself, ended up spinning in a circle once before his tires regained traction and he spun out, doing a little fishtailing himself as he raced for a side street. _What the fuck, what the fuck, what the fuck!_ he gibbered silently, feeling frightened for the first time. It wasn't the same Lamborghini, he _knew_ that, but how had it managed to cut him off?! Did the guys have freaking walkie-talkies?

The roar of an engine warned him of pursuit, and Sam was just distracted enough to clip a garbage can. Ignoring the screaming of his passengers, he reflected with relief that at least no one was shooting at him yet. Alright, so he had the second Lambo on his tail -- where was the _first one_?

_Speak of the _--

Sam served desperately as the first Lambo came out of nowhere and nearly sideswiped him. The larger car roared next to him, and after a stunned moment, Sam felt some more programs start up -- and everything seemed to slow down a hell of a lot. Inside his cab, the panicking humans screamed in slow motion, practically, and it made a lot of sense for Sam to stop just running away and give _them_ a few close calls. He hit his brakes twice -- once to drop clear of the Lambo running beside him, and the second accompanied by turning his wheels. With a squeal and a lot more upset things and honking cars, Sam pulled a one-eighty and hit the gas. The second Lambo, unable to maneuver in the tight road unless it wanted to crash into him, and apparently not wishing to crash despite being a bigger vehicle, passed him with enough speed to rock him slightly, and then Sam's engine overcame inertia, and he was zipping back the way they came.

He spun his wheels and veered sideways long before the street he wanted to go down came up, so that by the time he stopped sliding, he was ready to rocket down that side street, and yes he had got that move straight out of the car chases in the movies, but he made it work. It was perhaps lucky for him that he'd been haunting this city for the last few days with nothing to do but drive and therefore he was fairly familiar with the streets. He was headed toward which ever one would get him out of town -- and he didn't particularly care where it lead, either. That, and he really wanted more room. Sure, a Lambo was like ... a racing car, right? Italian. Pretty sweet, but not really Sam's thing. He liked them well enough, but wouldn't wanna own one, or drive one. So, anyway, they could go fast, right?

The question was, could they go as fast as he could?

He felt unnaturally intrigued by the question. Then again, his logic and sense of self-preservation was enough that he wasn't going to ... to _play_ with whoever was driving the Lambos. Though, honestly? Who the hell used a pair of Lamborghini's to engage in chasing a pair of druggies down ...?

He must have slowed down a bit, because when he picked up on the tell-tale purr of the Lambo engines, he was able to speed up quite a bit. _Fuck_, he thought dismally, even as a part of him was giddily excited. There was just ... something _right_ about car chases -- and maybe, just _maybe_, that was because he was a chasebot, now. _Fuck_, he repeated.

His engine worked with disturbing ease to give him an extra burst of speed for which to dodge into the traffic. Algorithms chugged away to automatically take control in desperate moments (like gravity reasserting itself), and his pumps pounded away. A little part of him was vindictively pleased when the cars he had near-hits with blared their horns, dodging in and out of smaller and smaller gaps, becoming more assured in every move he made. The Lambos were still pacing him, though, but he noticed that Mickey and Danny had fallen silent.

It may have been a little much for Sam, because that was when he heard his own voice for the first time when it echoed smugly through the cab: "This, my friends? This is your brain on drugs. Any questions?"

They might not have had any questions, if their renewed shrill screaming was anything to go by, but Sam did. _Whose voice was that_?! Well, it wasn't female -- but it sure in the hell wasn't _his_. That wasn't even his voice over the phone! It had the same oddly mature and aloof note and that very slight electrical tang that he'd heard in the other Autobots (although, come to think of it, that probably hadn't been noticeable until he ... well, started _changing_), and yet it still somehow managed to sound exactly like it was coming from a teenaged boy. What the hell?

Oh, well. It wasn't girly, and that was good, right?

About the time that Danny and Mickey started digging their nails into his interior was about the time that Sam had enough. The guys in the Lambos were way too insistent for him to tolerate, and if they wanted these two guys bad enough to chase Sam down through gaps in traffic barely big enough to fit a Mini through, they could _have_ them.

Sam started a chain reaction. First, he hit his brakes, causing the cars around and behind him to either engage in desperate maneuvers or hit the brakes as well. Horns went off, car alarms went off, cars were hit and a pile up started. This didn't alarm Sam very much: with a pop, both of his doors opened, and he used some of that miraculous shape shifting capability to tilt is seats, tossing both sobbing wrecks out on either side, along with their loot. While the two humans scrambled away from him, he slammed the doors shut, locked them, played the most obnoxious part of his alarm as a final word, and then hit the gas (so to speak). At this point, he was no longer having fun, and just wanted to leave the mess behind.

The Lamborghini duo had a different idea. Sam had _thought_ that they had been caught up in the pile up, or otherwise he wouldn't have taken off at a leisurely pace, and now the two were _stalking him_. For exactly thirty four of those miniseconds, he was baffled, until the rather alarming thought occurred to him that he might have just caught the eye of some crazy bastard who would then proceed to chase him around England, trying to find out what made him tick.

Hell, if he could meet Cybertronians ... _why not_? Holy fuck, this was _bad_! It was a little late to try to play 'situation normal, perfectly average car here, just taking a drive' _now_. He'd just rather obviously bunted his only human passengers out. He wasn't sure it was smart to make a run for it, either, considering the Lambos had kept up with him the entire time, despite being both wider and longer than he was.

The Lambos swerved in and out of the traffic, casually switching lanes and positions like some demented form of sideways-leap-frog. How any of the other cars were _ignoring_ this ... ugh, Sam increased his speed just a little, not going even half as fast as he could, only pushing seventy, but he was calculating what he knew about Lamborghinis. He knew they got crappy mileage, and he personally didn't think they were that awesome of a car, but he might be biased, at least recently. He hadn't been much of a car man back when he was human. Shouldn't they have run out of gas by now? Surely playing musical lanes couldn't help.

_Oh, no you did not_, he thought irritably when they began to shorten the distance. He felt the needle of his speedometer jump, crawling past eight-five, then ninety and one hundred. To his frustration, the gap didn't open any, but at least the two cars were no longer closing the distance, either. He zipped off the highway onto a feeder road, both to get away from the humans and because he was getting short tempered, and the last time he'd gotten so irritated, he'd tried to delete Megatron from the Matrix -- and succeeded.

And he really should stop saying that like he believed he was Neo from the movie, but if being what he was today wasn't taking the red pill, he didn't know what was. Too bad he couldn't dodge bullets.

Enough was enough -- Sam couldn't out maneuver these guys, and he couldn't out run them. All that was left was to go face-to-face and see if some opportunity presented itself to him. Though most of the programs that had instigated such suicidal moves had since shut off, Sam knew how it worked. Gripping the road, he hit the brakes and spun, allowing himself to roll backwards before coming to a stop and idling. The Lamborghinis had been staying a comfortable distance back, and slowly coasted to a stop now, side-by-side and angled slightly as if they were blocking the way back. Perhaps the guys thought that he'd pull another one of those moves that got him away from them earlier ... but Sam didn't think he _could_ do that without some of those programs chugging away.

Thus, they slipped into a Mexican standoff.

It was at this time that he could spare enough attention to focus completely on his pursuers, and it was only then that he realized just how _new_ they were. As a matter of fact ... interpreting the data his scanners gave him was hard, but Sam thought that he might actually _recognize_ the exact style from these pictures Miles showed him months ago. Miles, being the scifi-superhero-etc geek that he was, loved the futuristic look of Lamborghinis, and he threw a fit about the ones at the Geneva show last March because they looked like 'speed bumps'. He then went on to photoshop one into the Batmobile, but that was another story. Sam assumed the speed bump remark came from the continuous curve and the dark gray color ... and the fact that he was pretty sure that Lamborghini owners would _never_ allow their car to go over a speed bump on account of how that speed bump would _murder_ the Lambo.

In either case, one was an exact copy in yellow with a spoiler -- and, actually, no. It wasn't _yellow_ -- it just looked that way, most of the time. It seemed that it had a rather fancy paint job: some metallic glaring yellow that flushed a deep reddish orange and Sam didn't know if it was the point or not, but it _really_ emphasized the space-agey curve of the car.

Sam immediately stereotyped the Lamborghini as belonging to a huge jerk with too much money.

Which brought him around to the _other_ one, since he wondered who let them around each other. Oh, sure, the other one was red and just as new and shiny, but it ... well, it was a rather simple candy-apple red, all over. Yeah, yeah, the paint job was nice -- it was a literal _candy-apple_, as in glossy and edible and appealing to small children with oral fixations, but the jerk that owned it was obviously outclassed by the jerkiness of the jerk who owned the flashy yellow one with the holographic two-tone paint.

Just about the time that Sam started to reconsider that glossy edible look of the red paint job, remembering the time Bee had come back freshly cleaned and had been fairly streaked _white_, he was so glossy, the two Lamborghinis came apart from the seams and stood up -- and well, it was pretty obvious that _no one_ owned the Lambos after all.

They were a little taller than Bumblebee, but not by much -- maybe a foot, and appeared just about as similar to each other than any two Cybertronians that Sam had seen so far. Even then, though, there were differences -- the yellow one, for example, seemed to have some additional things around his shoulders that were probably _guns_, and it bulked him out top-heavy a lot like Ironhide only not because it was the two sides of a _truck_. Then, both had configured their armor differently -- though Sam noticed that the colored portions were pretty spare and shortly came to the conclusion that like Prime, they had compacted themselves tightly to fit into the vehicle shape they'd chosen. Their faces were vaguely humanoid in the same way that Bumblebee's had been vaguely such (before the dozens of silver plates, of course), and their optics a clear Arctic blue.

Sure, the transformation sequences might only take a few seconds (several miniseconds), but Sam was upset enough as it was that it was probably a good thing that he hadn't had more time to think. He wasn't sure _why_ he was just so very pissed off, except that _some_ of it was that he had been cut off from the Autobots and been _alone_ and being what he was now -- and he hadn't even _considered_ that the cars following him were Cybertronians. Maybe a part of it was that he wasn't sure when or how the other two knew that _he_ wasn't just a car. That they hadn't tried _communicating_, and that he looked a lot like an idiot.

What happened next was rather inevitable.

"Oh wow," he said, a little surprised that his voice projected out toward them without him even thinking about it, "I'm surprised you kept up. I mean, Lamborghini's aren't the most -- ah -- maneuverable of cars."

What followed was a short moment of confusion while the two robots seemed slightly taken aback and shifted to click and static-crackle at each other, and a short pause that lasted only spare miniseconds that Sam would have never caught if he wasn't operating Cybertronian time. Then they both began to rumble, but in completely different and incompatible pitches -- if Sam wasn't completely wrong, the red one was amused, and the yellow one _very much wasn't_. It helped that the yellow one didn't sound all that different from Ironhide when _he_ was angry.

"_What_ did you say?" it -- he, actually, rather obviously _he_ -- demanded, obviously fairly irritated.

"It might be some obscure greeting ritual the nuet's came up with," the red one said, still yuking it up. There was some kind of strange difference in their voices, as if they'd both tried to chose the same one but one or the other couldn't mimic it exactly.

The yellow one ignored him, taking a step forward aggressively and pointing with one rather dangerous looking hand. "Are you trying to say something about my alt mode!?" he demanded, and apparently he had a Spanish accent. It took Sam a moment to make it all up with his new way of hearing things, but considering the amount of Spanish he'd grown up hearing, it was hard to mistake.

And Sam, because he had never learned to keep his mouth shut, said, "Oh, nothing at all, of course. Just -- well, you're a _Lamborghini_. With a spoiler, you know, for all of that lift at high speeds."

"Like you're one to talk, you boxy little --!" Perhaps thinking that actions were more use at this point than words, he cut off his own rant and his pointing arm whirled and shifted and began to hum as the newly-formed cannon charged. It was at this point that his companion saw fit to interfere, now clicking as well as rumbling -- he was _really_ enjoying this entire thing way too much, Sam realized.

"Sunstreaker," he said, and even his human inflection said he thought it was hilarious. He grabbed the limb and physically pointed it away from Sam, who had already engaged his tires and was easing backwards as they spoke. "Put the cannon away."

They engaged in a brief struggle, the yellow one ranting the entire time even as the red tried to reason with him. "He called my aft big! I'm gonna turn him into little boxy _slag_! I'm warning you, get off my cannon and outta my way!"

"No -- no, 'Streaker, com'n," he cajoled, "it's _bad_ to kill the only other mech we've run across since crashing here on this miserable dirt ball of a planet."

The yellow one -- Sunstreaker, apparently -- looked away from Sam to glower at him. "You're forgetting," he snapped, "that we chose the same alt."

"It's an awesome alt," Red said blithely, glancing at the arm he was using to struggle with Sunstreaker. "A tight fit, but nothing I can't live with."

With an irritated growl, he said bluntly, "that means he called _your_ aft big, too."

Red considered that for a moment, then protested with a hurt, "_hey_! What did I ever do to you?"

Sam was no longer sure he _wasn't_ dreaming; the entire thing just seemed entirely too bizarre. "You tried to _run into me_, you jerk!"

"You know, he has a point there, 'Streaker."

Sunstreaker gave up, bringing the struggle to an end and dismantling his cannon while somehow managing to express quite clearly to Sam that he was _very_ accustomed to this sort of behavior from his counterpart. Sam, who had been friends with Miles for many years, was very familiar with that kind of resignation, since he felt it himself more often than not.

"So," he said, since it didn't seem likely that anyone would be shooting at anyone for now, "wait, you said crashed -- are you guys _lost_?" The hidden unacknowledged hope that he'd been found dwindled and died a lonely death.

"Lost? Who, us? Nah," the red one said. "We know exactly where we are!"

"Yeah," Sunstreaker said with a noise that Sam thought might have been heavy irony, but wasn't sure. "Down to the last coordinates -- for what good that does, you idiot!"

_Coordinates ...?_ Sam wondered while the red Autobot made offended noises. Running a system check, he came to the alarming realization that it was one of the things that Ratchet had firewalled. What the hell! Why would he choose to block off the _navigation system_! ... he had a navigation system. Wow.

"So," the red one said, sounding a little hopeful. "You're not the only one down here, right? I mean, you couldn't possible be the _only_ other neutral here, you guys _never_ travel alone, unless ..." At this point, it may have suddenly occurred to the two that Sam might very well be whatever was with neutrals that hung alone.

"No -- um," he said, not quite sure what to make of it. Technically, Sam _wasn't_ an Autobot, and neutral pretty much summed up what he was right now, but with Bumblebee in the picture ... well, he just didn't know. "Whatever you're thinking right now? Not true -- " or at least, Sam didn't think it was. "I mean, I don't think there is anyone over _here_, but I know some other guys that are -- you know, on planet Earth."

"That's the best news I've heard for orns," red said, though he hadn't needed to. He was making a low frequency white-noise, which lead Sam to believe that giant robots from outer space had more in common with cats than his association with Bumblebee had lead him to believe. "Who are they -- neutrals or Autobots?"

It occurred to Sam that it was strange that red didn't ask about Decepticons, though if he remembered right, either Bumblebee or Ratchet had explained to him that Megatron slaughtered the minibots and that the chasebots hung out with Elita-One who allied herself (probably 'herself') with Optimus. Chances were good that Sam wasn't allied with Decepticons, then, right? "I take it you guys _weren't_ crashed here because you were following a transmission," he said.

"Trans -- what are you talking about, _transmission_?"

"Ah ha," Sam said flatly. "Optimus Prime. Like ... a few months ago, he sent off a transmission. The All Spark --" the unfamiliar voice cut off for a self-conscious mini-second, "is gone. Destroyed." (Or at least it's familiar shape was, and while Sam _seemed_ to have woken up himself ... he wasn't sure he was the _only_ thing in there.)

"_What_!" the two chorused, both causing a mild commotion of disbelief and general denial.

"No, no way," red added, "the All Spark? Is totally not gone. No way."

"Er -- yes. Yes, it is."

"No," Sunstreaker said, with a warning growl. "It's not."

"Or maybe it's not," Sam said brightly. He hadn't known he could actually _sink on his wheels_ before. Apparently, he could. "So, right, next goal -- Optimus Prime."

It was almost like they hadn't even heard his name until that moment, because red brightened obviously. "The Prime's around? Who else?" Sam wasn't sure what the hell he meant by that, but told him anyway, which got a gleeful response. "Hey, Sunstreaker!" red said, turning to the yellow mech. "Optimus Prime's group of old clankers is here!"

Sunstreaker didn't seem to impressed. "So what? We've been getting around _just fine_ by ourselves all of these forsaken orns."

"_Prime's_ group! That means -- check ups with Ratchet! An _actual cleaning session_. I've had this glob of gunk in my pelvic gear --"

Abruptly, Sunstreaker perked up. "And Ironhide," he added. "By this time, he probably has weapon systems to be tested --"

"_Weapon systems_," the red one said blissfully, purring. "Do you think he ever managed to get the sort of power he talked about ...?"

Sam was faintly disturbed. "Er --" he said, "yeah, about that ... they sorta ... aren't on this island. They're in America -- or they were. Decepticons might have found the base. I've been out of contact here in England for a while."

"That's no problem," the red one said, getting the distant aspect that Sam associated with Ratchet researching something. "America is ... hmm ... well, okay, that might be a problem. Who makes it so you can't drive somewhere?" They could access the Internet from _here_? Oh, not fair! Sam had to find a wifi hotspot to get Internet -- which, on reflection, he still did not know how to use. Well.

"So, what, they changed their contact frequencies on you or something?" Sunstreaker asked skeptically.

"M -- maybe," Sam said uneasily, "or, um ... I actually never had them to begin with?"

Both mechs looked at him. If he was not mistaken, they were gaping incredulously. Finally, the red one stirred to life -- "What kind of mech doesn't have _contact frequencies_?"

One that wasn't a mech at the time? "Ah -- well, even if I did have them," he said, "I couldn't use them. Nearly everything is ... offline. Firewalled. Ratchet did it."

More incredulous gaping, up until Sunstreaker demanded, "And if they're in America, what are _you_ doing _here_? Don't tell me you just _drove_ here."

"Didn't we _just_ cover that I couldn't drive here?" he asked rhetorically. "I -- _think_ we were attacked ... by Decepticons?" His memory of the time ... still not good. He remembered vaguely that he'd gone to talk to Mikaela, and that Arcee had been there -- and then he was waking up in the ocean. Being attacked was the only thing he could think of that would have left him on the beach of England. "I dunno. My memory's shot."

"They probably moved base, then, if this glitch got attacked," red said, looking at his companion. "They're probably in hiding -- but finding them should be easy, right? Hey, boxy thing, you know where their base was, right?"

... _what_ did he just call him? "Oh, yeah, of course I do, Speedbump," Sam said brightly. "The only reason I'm here instead of _there_? Is because it's across the freakin' _ocean_, and right now? I'm lucky I can even _transform._"

That little name calling thing earned him a look accompanied by a wounded noise. "Hey, now, that's not fair." It seemed that Autobots _could_ pout. Would wonders never cease?

"My name isn't _boxy thing_," Sam said. "My name -- ... well, I don't have one right now, but _boxy thing_ isn't it." They had never gotten around to giving him a false designation, for one uncertain if he might be assigned his own during the transformation (he hadn't) and for another, he hadn't decided what form he was going to take and therefore what function he was going to fulfill.

"Holy slag," the red one said, whipping around to grab Sunstreaker by a wheel. "We just got saddled with a newly activated mech!"

"One of these days," Sunstreaker said darkly, "Primus and I are going to have _words_."

Red stared at him. "Don't you mean -- plasma blasts?"

"One of the two," he said grimly. "Or both."

"So, question," Red said, looking back at Sam, "how long _have_ you been activated?"

Sam was pretty much at a loss. He'd been -- well, a robot for only a week or two now, but his brain had been metal for a lot longer than that. "Dunno," he said, "I just -- well, all of my memories are of Earth."

"Wow," he said, staring at Sam. "Just ... wow." He turned back to Sunstreaker, gesturing toward Sam, who was still hiding as a car. "Not only is he newly activated, his circuits are _fried_ -- I thought we had it bad, but -- wow. I don't think Earth has a language that adequately describes the situation." He turned back to Sam, saying, "Okay, little ... weird neutral thing, you're _Boxy_. Apparently, you can't speak the right way, so that'll just have to do for now. Now, we need to figure out how to get from way over _here_, to way over _there_." He gestured helpfully in the direction that must be America.

"Don't speak to me of _plans_," Sunstreaker said irritably, "the last plan you had ended up with those pair of fleshy things trying to break into us."

Sam was ... really, really frustrated right now. He dug his tires into the pavement, wishing he knew how to make all of those interesting noises Autobots used to communicate with one another. Unfortunately, as much as he'd love to, he didn't have the first idea how.

"This is going to be difficult with boxy thing not being able to use the RC," he said. "Do you think we could hack by Ratchet's work?"

"_Oh no_. No, Sideswipe. You are _not_ plugging into that little glitch -- his processor is _obviously_ already slag, and I am _not_ listening to your whining if he gives you virus!"

"I'm sure it's safe if Ratchet plugged in. The last thing he'd do would be allow himself get hacked."

"You just don't know how to keep your processor to yourself."

"Come on ... he's practically rolling blind. It'll be less of liability."

There was only so much that Sam was willing to listen to. Three insults ago was that exact amount. With a crack that nearly startled _him_, his engine backfired impressively as his fury choked him just as effectively as it would have if he were human, and then continued to rumble loudly. "_Turn back_ into Lamborghinis, _shut the hell up_, and _help me think of a away to get to America_," he gritted out, speakers squealing as if a microphone was too close to them.

This was apparently effective enough communications for the two Lamborghinis, since they both began to stare at him like they weren't entirely sure he wasn't actually a bomb and would shortly explode.

"_Now_," Sam snarled.

Exchanging a look, they took a few steps away from each other and transformed back into Lamborghinis -- and yes, it did take quite a bit of squeezing to get them into such a shape, but they managed seamlessly. "Now what, oh ferocious leader of lost causes?" Sideswipe asked.

"Didn't I say '_shut the hell up'_?"

Both Lamborghinis pulled their 'perfectly innocent inanimate car' sparkle act. The yellow one less convincingly than the candy-apple red, but he doubted anyone would think twice about it.

_Better_, he thought grudgingly. "Now," he said, cycling air to get rid of the exhaust gas that had built up in his engine and to cool it off a bit, "on Earth, vehicles don't stay on the continent they were made on. Got it? You might have come over using that tunnel to get to England, but that's not how they transfer cars. All _we_ have to do is figure out how we can use this -- especially since you two chose the flashiest damn cars possible."

"Hey," Sideswipe complained, "it's called _good taste_, which seems to have you a bit _confused_."

"_Excuse me_?" Sunstreaker said at the exact same time, "Come over here and say that again -- to my grill!"

It seemed that Sam's original assessment was correct. Both Lamborghinis were jerks, but Sunstreaker indeed was the jerkiest jerk who ever jerked in Jerksville. "My point is that a couple of oh-seven Lambo -- _especially_ in red and yellow, especially _together_ -- are going to call a hell of a lot of attention to us from the humans. And let me tell you, the Decepticons discovered that humans really don't like giant robot aliens from space, and that they have technology that offlined one and _really_ slowed down another. Do _not_ agitate the humans."

"What! You're telling me that the little squishies _killed a Decepticon_?" Sideswipe yelped.

"They don't just make hot cars, you know," Sam muttered. "If they got angry enough at each other, they could blow up this entire world in under a day. So, _don't. Poke. The humans._"

" ... I think I'm going to like it here," Sunstreaker said in a wholly inappropriate way.

"I told you we should have look at their 'Internet' more," Sideswipe said.

* * *

- The Lamborghini Gallardo Superleggera actually is quite a bit smaller than an 09 Camaro. Normally, I would retain these proportions for epic lulz, but I loev twins, and after what Michael Bay did in ROTF … lol no. So the LamboTwins copied the shell and made it bigger … in other words, they're not a very superleggera Lamborghini (as superleggera means 'superlight'). So … HUGE LAMBO IS HUGE. If BB can be a concept camaro, and Ratchet a hummer that doesn't exist, the twins can be abnormally large Lambos.

- Sam's Giant Robot Name is not 'Boxy', never fear. They're calling him 'Boxy' the same way a tall person calls a short one 'midget'.

- For everyone considering a permanent 'woeface' in response to the holograms, don't worry. It's not another XPOS. It's mostly for going undercover, like the Mustache Man for Autobots.

- FINALLY: Some of the bots will have familiar names and unfamiliar attitudes, and will interact differently than one might expect (as if you couldn't tell with the Twins). Hopefully, I won't slaughter anyone's favorite character, but especially because I'm bringing fan favorites into it, I wanted to give you a heads up.


	14. Into The Fire

**Chapter Thirteen: Into the Fire  
**Oh, sure, Carly might never step foot around another car judging by her hysterical crying as she ran away, pulled along by her boyfriend, but that might save her life one day ... if she ever ... you know, ran into a Decepticon.

-+-

Despite the fact that Sunstreaker and Sideswipe had been on Earth long enough to have been at the Geneva car show and get alts, and the fact that humanity stole all of its technology from Megatron, they were not familiar enough with the transmissions in the air that they could clearly and easily pick them up. Considering that Sam seriously doubted that the abandoned little air shack that served as the Autobot base had wifi, he guessed it was possible that the two just weren't fluent in human communication yet. They hadn't even understood English when he first spoke to them, so it probably meant they had downloaded a massive amount of information shortly after recovering from the crash ... and they simply hadn't accessed what they didn't consider important.

When faced with Sam, who only spoke English, they had to finally 'install' it and had so far considerately used it. Mostly. That wasn't to say that they didn't do their fair share of clicking and crackle-spitting, but it was hardly the only thing they used, and Sideswipe at least seemed set on practicing with the new language.

Still, considering the sheer level of jerkitude those two exuded, they probably communicated with each other a lot more than they communicated with him. On the other hand, he might have been unkind in that thought, since both were fairly helpful ... sorta.

"Whaddya _mean_, you gotta recharge?" Sideswipe complained, absently flashing his lights at the honking car, who apparently thought the Lamborghini wasn't parked far enough off the road. It seemed that Sideswipe was named that way for a reason, since Sam had sat back and watched in horror as the jerk wandered all over the freaking road and nearly _did so_ to several vehicles, who often beeped in indignant alarm. This would result in Sideswipe flashing his lights and wandering over to the other side of the road ... though he would inevitably end up back in the lane next to oncoming traffic, and Sam was just _waiting_ for the moment he could change Sideswipe's name to 'Head-On Collision'.

"I mean," he said, "that pretty soon I'm gonna go blank -- blue screen of death. Crash. Hibernation." He ran out of computer terms and got blunt: "there are warnings, like ... every where. My power levels are plunging in a way that makes me very nervous. Pop-ups every where." That last bit was more accurate than he cared for -- it wasn't like the movies, where it cluttered up his optics, but rather like several songs he was familiar with playing at the same time. He couldn't keep track of all of them, but he knew what they all meant, basically, and could recall the main part well enough.

It was a bit more annoying than Pop-Ups on Miles' old computers, though, because the computer in question was his brain, and he couldn't just hit the power button to escape it.

They had been traveling toward a more populated area to find wifi, since Sam had gone out of his way to get chased out into less busy roads. For some obscure reason that was beyond him at the moment, Sam had ended up in the middle of their one-mile caravan, so when he had signaled a stop, they'd pulled over in generally the same order. They hadn't really gotten very far when the warnings started going off, since Sam had other things to worry about than his power levels and had forgotten to keep an eye on it. Luckily, his software was set up with the expectation that he'd have more important things to worry about, and therefore it gave him ample warning.

Sunstreaker made an impatient noise. "Just push a little further," he said, "even you should be able to do that."

Of course, Sam had adverse reactions to be told to do things, and he figuratively dug in his Witwicky heels -- or maybe Taylor heels, since his mother could have been who gave him his stubborn attitude. "I am _not_ passing out on the road," he said shortly. "You know, they tell the humans not to sleep while driving for a very good reason -- mostly to do with crashes and stuff. And I'm pretty sure I am _not_ insured, and that's just not right."

The unfortunate quip when right over the two Autobot's heads, he was sure.

"Hey," Sideswipe drawled, like someone suddenly remembering something they were intending to do, "hey, you know, I think we recharged a lot back on that moon, right?"

For whatever reason, Sunstreaker wasn't pleased to hear it. "I am _not_ waiting around while Boxy over there recharges."

"Aw, come on, Sunstreaker. He's _defenseless_. Do you really think anyone's gonna be happy if they find out we abandoned a poor defenseless mech here?"

While Sam was sure it was very true that he _was_ a defenseless mech, considering he never got around to figuring out anything about his weapons, he didn't like _hearing_ that. "I was _fine_ before you two came along," he grumbled.

"Yeah, see?" Sunstreaker said, pouncing on that statement. "He's been wondering around ... what? How many months alone?"

"Ah --" Sam said, and decided to decline to elaborate. Well, it _was_ a difficult question to answer. He wasn't sure exactly how long he'd spent in the ocean, so ... no telling, really.

"Well -- whatever," he said dismissively. "Cars are parked everywhere. What does it matter?"

Sideswipe made a thoughtful noise, and Sam didn't think he quite liked where this was going and was starting to regret speaking up. "Hey, hey, hey," he protested. "You're just gonna -- what? _Leave me somewhere_?"

"We'll only be gone for a while," Sideswipe said brightly, and what the hell happened to leaving poor defenseless Sam behind?! "It won't even take a -- a breem to get to get to the city and find a hotspot and be back. With all that racing you did, you'll be out for an orn, definitely."

The two Lamborghinis could be the jerkiest jerks from Jerksville, but like hell was Sam going to let the only Cybertronians he knew the location of to just ... go off and ... cause havoc, or whatever. Considering some of the remarks made between the two of them, he was fairly certain that havoc wasn't exactly a foreign concept to them. And the truth was that Sam still had that nagging sense of responsibility -- that what happened because of and to the Cybertronians was somehow _his_ fault. He supposed that was the burden of all 'first contact' go-between people ... even if he hadn't, you know ... done much going in between.

"Oh, no, no, no, no," he said, abruptly moving until he was facing both Lamborghinis as well as he could. He didn't even care what it looked like to the people on the road -- reasoning with those two was much more important than worrying about blending in. (Then again, with a red and yellow Lamborghinis? So not blending in.) "No, you are _not_ going anywhere without me."

Sideswipe's hazard lights blinked with what Sam perceived as amusement. It was Sunstreaker, though, who pointed out: "what are you going to do to stop us, Boxy?"

"Yeah," his alt-double remarked, "if you have warnings, you're going to shut down whether you like it or not." And it was -- _ugh_ -- true, too. Sam knew from previous experience, which had made him so leery of letting his power levels drop too low. Even if his power gauge bobbed everywhere. Good grief.

"You wouldn't even be able to tell we were gone," Sunstreaker added. "So what does it matter?"

Because that was really anyway to make Sam go peacefully into recharge. What the hell! Humans could fight off sleep! (He should know.) Why couldn't supposedly super advanced robots stay awake ...? Then again, he supposed that if the, er, battery in question was dry, it was dry. No caffeine for giant robots, right?

In his frustration with the entire situation, Sam burst out with, "_fine_, go ahead! I'll just get left behind in recharge --"

That was his mistake. It was unfortunate that he was now a giant robot in need of going into a power saving state, because when he said that he'd be sleeping, he _thought_ about sleeping. As he had already noticed, his thoughts had a tendency to run off and _do_ things in the unfamiliar terrain of his processor. So, no sooner had he said that -- well, he did.

The two idling Lamborghinis sat there for a slightly startled moment, then simultaneously scanned the silent car. With humor, Sideswipe comm-linked with his counterpart. "(Looks like the kid's out cold.)"

Sunstreaker didn't respond immediately, instead pulling away from their small gathering to continue toward their original destination. "(Something's _wrong_ with that chasebot,)" he said instead.

"(You sound like _Ironhide_,)" Sideswipe said, hurrying to catch up. "(He's always said that there was something wrong with chasebots.)" Generally speaking, they both liked to form their own opinions about things, no offense to Ironhide ... but he _was_ an older model, from a few design eras before models became more specialized. Oh, sure, he'd tried to keep up, getting modifications that made him the weapon specialist that had brought Sideswipe and his counterpart out of the Long-Dark, but well -- programming was programming, if you got his drift.

"(He says that about every model made after he was activated,)" Sunstreaker said flatly, not appreciating the comparison. "(Forget that he's a Chase class model. There's something really very _wrong_ with him.)"

"(Well, his circuits _have_ been fried,)" he said. "(My bet is that he was _someone_ before he got slagged and reformatted. You can't expect him to be too together.)"

For a while, Sunstreaker considered the repercussions of that. Oh, they'd all _heard_ stories of some mech who'd either been shot down or crashed or hit by asteroids -- well, just generally trashed, and went into hibernation while their self-repair systems tried to fix them. The problem was that they'd been _so_ slagged that they didn't heal quite right. Maybe their Spark had just been too strained by the repair, or maybe their circuits just didn't connect the way they had before, but they were basically newly activated again -- with nothing but a ghost in their codes to show for the mech they used to be. "(Probably,)" he agreed darkly, finally. "(And whoever it was probably had loads of modifications, too. Even if he went as deeply as I _think_ he did, we should have been able to pick up some sort of Spark residue.)"

But there had been nothing. No vibration, no undue heat, no radiation -- no sense of a Spark. Someone had modified that chasebot to be able to _hide_.

It wasn't really all that shocking -- mechs had thought about it before. After all, a mech could see all sorts of experimental techniques in the bots around them -- Bumblebee, who had been made in the design era that sensor panels were being considered for mechs other than just the guardbots that they'd been designed for. Generally speaking, sensor panels were unrealistic for just about every mech that _wasn't_ a guardbot, and being in the middle of a war didn't help matters at all. A few had managed to retain them, but most had either had one shot off or both ripped off -- or opted to have them removed. A mech saw all kinds of experimental designs that either hadn't been fully developed or were outdated now that they were at war.

But war did it's fair share to designs. It _had_ occurred to some to make more changes, specifically to chasebots who had the spare memory meant for their excessive number of processors. It was a super speedy shell, filled with program that allowed a mech to make astrosecond decisions and act on them ... if one could be modified into an honest-to-Primus _spy_, not just the stand-ins like Bumblebee ...

Some mechs thought that Jazz had been an attempt at that very idea. He had been so heavily modified that it was no longer possible to make an accurate assumption of his original purpose, or his design period. Not many were close enough to Prime's chosen to know that every last one of those modifications was to replace damages that had been too severe to repair in the usual manner, or to compensate for trashed software. Jazz was the sort of mech that kept the dangerous missions for himself and never, _ever_ let the Decepticons win, no matter _what_ they did to him. That was the kind of mech that he was.

Of course, the only reason why there were no known chasebots who had been modified in such a direction was because most felt that it was the last thing they wanted -- something that could make accurate snap decisions and had the sort of skills a spy would have by nature. That and well ... chasebots, along with all of the other bots on the naturally small side of the scale were on Prime's side, if not neutral, and very few mechs _wanted_ to be rebuilt into war machines. There was still some hope that _some orn_, this war would be over.

If they had just run into evidence of that very thing -- a honest-to-Primus _warbot_, then ... well, the entire scope of the universe as they know it would shift. All Spark or no All Spark. Sunstreaker and Sideswipe would be the first mechs to admit that if there wasn't fighting, they wouldn't know what to do with themselves, but to be physically rebuilt into a _war machine_ ... it would change the entire purpose of their species as a whole. They'd all become warbots.

And it was a scary thought.

-+-

The last thing that Maggie Madsen had expected it to be when she picked up the phone two days ago was that it would be the handsome (and very married) Captain she remembered from that whole Sector Seven mess. It had been an awkward conversation, because he sounded like he couldn't believe he was asking her on behalf of the aliens to come to their base, and Maggie flatly couldn't believe that the aliens had asked for _her_. _My superiors __**hate**__ me_, she thought to herself, _but aliens think I'm awesome, apparently._ After a second, she heard that boy's voice saying, 'who knew?'

Now she was sitting in the back seat of a hummer, with only one duffle of hastily thrown together supplies at her feet, with her head pressed against the window as they approached the base. "Oh, wow," she breathed as they rolled through the gate of the compound.

It was in an isolated section of the state, and there were about half a dozen road blocks and diversions on the way to keep ignorant civilians or alien hunters away from it, plus the ridiculously dangerous looking fence complete with bored soldiers scattered around the boundary. Beyond that, in the distance, she could see the houses and the central structure that looked a bit like an airbase. It wasn't really all that impressive to look at, if she was completely honest, even knowing that under the airbase was a maze of rooms and hallways and tunnels, but it wasn't what it _looked_ like but what she knew lived within it.

"Watch it, hun," the hummer said calmly, "that tickles."

Maggie pulled back with a muttered sorry, looking toward the dashboard. There were men she knew that would pay twenty bucks to listen to the alien say _exactly_ that. It was a little jarring for a sex-phone operator's voice to come out of something like a hummer ... and, no, Maggie only knew what that sounded like because she'd accidentally tapped her dorm mate's boyfriend's cell phone, once. It was something she wished never to hear again.

Then again, she could probably put up with that voice. After all, she had been proved right in the most spectacular way possible -- and that had entailed ... everything, suddenly being in the thick of the fight for the cube. Then Keller hadn't forgotten that _she_ was the one who had tried to keep them from going to war with the wrong people, that it had been _her_ who had first thought that it was possible they were looking at _alien intelligence_. After that, the demand on her time was horrific -- she was jettisoned from one branch to another, trying to explain everything, trying to make sure that they all were on task and that no one was doing anything stupid. Trying to _explain_ what she had seen, what it meant to all of them.

"I thought it would be more _futuristic_."

She glanced over at Glen, who was peering out of the window and squinting against the hot sun. "They're trying to hide," she said flatly. "Not many people know of their existence, remember?" He was probably just in a bad mood because when he'd pulled some snacks out of his bag, the hummer had pulled over and threatened to make them walk. His stomach had been growling for the past three hours, since he'd been in such a hurry to get to the aliens that he hadn't been able to eat dinner and he'd skipped breakfast. That would have been more than enough to make _anyone_ hungry.

"Man," he said, not seeming to hear her. "What a _dump_."

Sighing, she leaned over to look out the front window. The base ahead was busy with the military men who had acquiesced to live along on the base alongside the aliens. Though it was obvious by the recreational vehicles and lawn ornaments that they lived out of the houses, judging by how busy it was around the base, they spent most of there time there ... but Maggie thought she spotted at least one or two nonmilitary vehicles that she thought didn't need a driver to go anywhere. There were, of course, no aliens up and walking around outside the base.

To tell the truth, Maggie had never thought that she was ever going to be able to interact with the aliens on a personal level ever again. Well, to be brutally honest, she hadn't to begin with. She had stood back and made observations, that was all ... and she hadn't understood what she was dealing with, not once. Not when she was looking across the helicopter at the despondent girl and the seething boy and asked what he was there for. It hadn't really clicked then -- it couldn't really. It hadn't clicked when she had seen the Megatron, and it hadn't clicked when she saw the cube, and it hadn't clicked when she saw the Nokia turned into a tiny battle machine.

It hadn't clicked the entire time she was listening to the boy explain their purpose on Earth, it didn't click when they were under attack, and then -- _"You've got to take me to my car," he said, cutting through the silence of the room_. It had been something else to observe, but --

Even that captain had heard something in the boy's voice, and Maggie's intellect was agreeing -- the boy had more experience with the aliens than anyone else in the room (Maggie knew just how little familiarity an _observer_ had with the observed), he was the closest thing they had to an expert or advisor, and so _why weren't they listening to him_? But it hadn't clicked up until they opened the door and the nails-on-chalkboard noise coming from the alien reached them and he bolted forward, shouting hoarsely for them to _stop_. And then he'd begun talking to the alien, and Maggie _swore_ -- _"YES. THEY. HURT. ME."_

She wasn't sure she heard it, but the unflinching way the boy stood still as the alien turned what was unmistakably a weapon upon all of them, the stiff line of his shoulders ... and it clicked, then. _"YES. THEY. HURT. ME."_ and it clicked for her that she was dealing with _aliens_, honest to God _intelligent life from another planet_. It was like the ET movie, watching the boy coax the alien down. It was like that movie or something else, as everyone hurried after the trio, because even though _they_ were urgent, something about how the two kids and the alien moved said that they knew it was _desperate_. So Maggie and the others were chasing after the trio, watching the two kids bounded off ahead, saying, _"com'n, com'n, Bumblebee -- the cube's this way -- hurry --" _and the alien strode after them, pausing ever so often to turn unmistakably wary looks on the other humans they passed only to be urged onward when the boy or the girl would race back and grab at the large metal hand above their head and coax him along -- _"no, no, don't worry about them -- com'n, Bumblebee, the Decepticons are here, we have to get the cube."_

She thought the last time she'd have to deal with them was when that horrific tiny little thing attacked them. That was supposed to be it.

The hummer coasted into the base, and inside there were cars and the soldiers, and even a few aliens walking up right, the smaller ones, at least. She wouldn't soon forget the sheer magnitude of a creature like the Megatron, and these wouldn't have come up to his knees. The door to the hummer popped open, and she slid carefully out of the seat, facing right into the path of a sleek pale gold Jaguar that was rolling up silently and slow.

Maggie's breath hitched involuntarily when the Jaguar suddenly gave a jolt, like it was shaking it's parts loose, and they flipped and the entire car shifted and then she was staring up at the softly frosted silver human face attached to all sixteen feet of sleek winter-gold robot. "Hi," she said, hushed and feeling way out of her depth.

"Hello," the alien said, gently and sleekly sinking down so that she didn't have to crane her head so much. "I am Elita-One. You are Maggie Madsen and Glen Whitmann, correct?"

"Yeah," she said, still not quite having caught her breath. It was the first time one of them had actually deigned to speak directly to her, to _look_ at her.

Glen make a weak noise that sounded strangely like 'squee', which was not the kind of noise Maggie would have normally accepted out of Glen, except for the fact that she knew just how much of a technogeek he was. Coming face-to-face with robotic aliens ... yeah. 'Squee' was about right. It became abruptly clear that she would have to be the interpreter between the two of them, and that she might as well start now.

"He means yeah," she said. "He's Glen, I'm Maggie. What can we do for you?"

-+-

What none of the three robotic life forms could have known (because, honestly, Sam only _looked_ Cybertronian ... didn't he?) was that the city had a _lot_ of trouble with cars being parked and left at the convenient bare spot Sam had spotted to make his stand on. Therefore, while two flashy Lamborghinis were driving off toward the city for an information run and having a silent freak out about poor little Sam being a _warbot_ of all things, someone happened to notice that a blue Mini Cooper with white racing stripes had been apparently abandoned. Calls were made to the proper authorities, and while Sam slept the sleep of the innocent (or, rather, he was so deeply into a hibernation mode that it would take imminent danger of death to shake him out of it, and he was therefore a very normal car at the moment and completely defenseless) a tow tuck came by to impound him.

Sam would not discover this for some hours. Which was probably lucky, since he might have done something stupid if he had woken up while still attached to the tow truck.

So it was the next day, when the mechanic that worked at the impoundment lot came to make sure the unlicensed, unregistered, but apparently _unstolen_ Mini Cooper was in good working order to be sold, that Sam woke up. Obviously, he was a bit disoriented ... but he had been so massively disoriented by becoming a giant robot and being underwater that this was by comparison, cake. Having the mechanic talking to his friend, the tow truck driver, over the phone helped to make him understand the situation a lot better. (A part of him railed over the difference between England and America -- if he had been impounded in America, he would have been taken to a _city_ owned lot, instead of a privately owned one. That was a bit like stealing, wasn't it? But apparently they had a friend in blue who was _terribly_ bad at paper work, so ...)

It was then time for Sam to panic. He knew that mechanics had a tendency to ... you know, actually look at stuff. And Sam knew that he had the shell of a Mini Cooper, and he had an interior, with a radio ... but he also knew that under his hood, he didn't have _anything_ like an engine! Not like Bumblebee had that time that Mikaela popped the hood.

And -- oh. Right. _Right_. And if he remembered correctly, Bumblebee had also changed his shell without even reverting to his ... bipedal robot form. Not that Sam thought he was quite that awesome, since transforming tended to make him go into fits of panic. At least he hadn't had any more fits since he had managed to make it to being a car. Which was, you know ... _strange_, since a person would think being _bipedal_ would be more familiar than having wheels. Not Sam, but considering some of the things that Sam had done and thought in the last few months, how surprised could anyone be?

In a lucky break, the mechanic had to go to the front, and left the garage Sam was currently sitting in. The first thing he did was crank up his sensors back to the normal level he kept them at, then frantically began rifling through his processor for the information he had scanned. He _did_ have one complete set of blueprints for a Mini Cooper, after all, instead of the gutted out thing he was using now.

The good thing about the massive amount of processing capacity he seemed to have right now was that even though he was feeling panicky and he wasn't _sure_ what he was doing, he still finished feeding in the complex mathematical insanity into his transformation equation way before he would have stressed about it. Then his programs came back and cussed him out -- apparently, what he wanted to do was much more complex than changing a shell, and he would _have to_ make the transformation back to the bipedal mode in order to allow everything to shift where it had to. He simply didn't have enough space under the Mini shell, which shouldn't really have surprised him, since the accompanying information informed him that he would _never_ have enough space under his shell to do _anything_.

_Oh, yay_, he thought dismally as he reluctantly feed in the command code. The Mini Cooper shell came apart, not just at the seams, but _creating_ seams to come apart at. Gears shifted, pistons worked, and hydraulics hissed as previously folded parts now _unfolded_, shifting in a careful dance to allow other parts to move where they must before assuming the positions needed to support the standing weight of a fifteen foot robot. Sam's gears gave a tortured squeal as he finally made it, for only the second time since having transformed into a car. This understandably panicked him for a moment, and he froze in a sort of comical 'oh no!' pose, but he couldn't hear the mechanic coming back.

It was then that Sam noticed his own arm -- again. Even though he had already once transformed into an upright mode, he hadn't really taken a look at himself, too worried trying to get a radio to fill in the empty space behind the radio dials. But he remembered some of it, and not only did he not even really match whatever his protoform had looked like, it didn't even match what it had looked like that time. Last time, he had looked a bit like someone had cut apart a Mini and reformed them into a robot, but _this time_ ... well, yes, he was still blue and he still had heavy Mini influences, but he closer resembled the other Autobots. Less ... _boxy_ and more like a creature in his own right.

Not that it had anything to do with what the two jerks called him, since that had been based entirely off his 'choice' of alt. They hadn't even seen his bipedal mode.

_Alright, already, worry about that later_, he scolded himself, checking again for the mechanic. It was time to try reversing the change, in much greater detail than he really felt comfortable with. Although being a car had cut down drastically on the number of panic attacks he'd had, since now every time he wondered about that breathing thing, some other part of him said, 'cars don't breathe, stupid', and that was that ... Sam still freaked out on occasion. Luckily not since he had run into the Lamborghini jerks, but ... still. Being a car was _weird_. The only way he had of perceiving the world at large was through his windows and other various sensors, and maybe it helped him think he was in a tank, or something ... some kind of space ship, trying to understand what the scanners told him ... it still freaked him out. And now he was trying an insanely complex transformation, and maybe Ratchet would take a wrench to his head -- make that not a maybe, but a for sure. Maybe even firewall his transformation command code and --

Well, actually, that would be okay with Sam. It couldn't possibly be frightening if he did it while Sam was a Mini. Sam was quite okay with being a car. It was unexpected reassuring. It was familiar. Because somehow Sam found it reassuring to be a blind thing with wheels and not to be a robot with hands and feet and eyes -- wow. Just wow. That was Sam for you. He had weird preoccupations and liked being a car more than a robot. Even if that car was a Mini Cooper. Ahah ...

It took Sam five tries to get it right ... luckily not because he was passing out, like he had the very first time he changed. It was just that his inner workings kept catching and just refusing to move, grinding and squealing (at a range he now recognized as probably outside human hearing). Once he was safely back on his wheels, he actually ...

Okay, he actually acted a bit like a dog, stretching as high off his wheels as he could without breaking the illusion of being a Mini, and shaking as if he were going over railroad tracks. He was _trying_ to get some more of that salt and sand out of his gears, and since a lot of it had been powdered by his repetitive transformation, he did manage to shake a fair amount out. Then he analyzed his current configuration -- the joy of having a processor and programs that could do such things in miniseconds, right? He was able to immediately match the build of the car he was pretending to be and his actual current configuration, and figured he was doing as good as he was going to. They were only _superficially_ identical in the most minor of ways, but as long as no one got too curious, he should be fine.

Yes, Sam was now a living case of looking, walking, and quacking like a duck -- and then sprouting tentacles and bleeding acid. Wait -- was that even the same movie? Miles made him watch so many alien movies that he got them all confused, sometimes.

A few minutes after the last of the dust settled, the mechanic came back with what appeared to be his sixteen year old son. "Wow -- brand new, right?" the kid said.

"Yeah, tracked it down to the dealer," the mechanic agreed. "They don't have any missing cars, though, so ... this one just sort of appeared out of nowhere."

"What -- like a ... phantom car?"

"Well, I don't know bout that," the mechanic said doubtfully. "But since you wanted to learn a little about cars, let's get started on her."

Oh, no. No, Sam was _not_ a girl! He didn't care if boats and cars were sorta default female, he was _not_ a girl! -- though, it did bring up the fact that the jerk duo had gotten his gender right and so far, they were the only one. It was hard to remain still when they approached him, and even harder when the kid popped his hood and the mechanic locked it into place. But Sam still remained cold dead steel under the hands in his engine, checking his fluid levels. It was probably only his human discomfort that made him feel so ill tempered with the meddling, since Bumblebee had never expressed displeasure for the time Mikaela had reached into his components, and even enjoyed it when Sam cleaned bugs off his grill.

What followed were memories better locked away and never mentioned again. Just leave it at that they were _thorough_. Windshield fluid, anti-freeze, oil, gas ... ugh. Sam's processor had frozen up some time ago with sheer mortification, and he imagined it was a lot like going to the doctor for that prostate exam thing he once overheard his dad speak of in such horrified tones. What the hell was Sam supposed to do with the wiper fluid and gas?

After a moment, the erratic sensors flashing neon lights across wires in a panic calmed, having analyzed all the foreign unknown substances, and informed him that while the gas could be converted into a suitable energy source, the wiper fluid simply had to go. This was unfortunately not unlike having guzzled a coke and then being unable to burp.

Yes, Sam was thoroughly miserable and violated.

"Hey, Mac," the kid said, frowning slightly at Sam. The mechanic grunted as he was wiping off his hands -- _why?! Sam couldn't possible have had a greasy engine previous to this!_ -- so the kid continued. "Do you -- ah, think I could take 'er for a run? Tonight?"

That gave the mechanic pause, even while Sam grumbled darkly in the silence of his inner workings. He looked at the wiry pasty kid for a moment, then frowned at Sam. "Well, I dunno," he said reluctantly.

"Com'n," the kid begged. "I'll -- I'll wash it, it'll be good as new -- _better_ than new!"

"'Better than new'."

"Oh, sure!"

"Well ..." the mechanic looked at Sam again, wiping his hands one more time. "Fine. But she'd better be _better than new_ when I get back here in the morning. You crash it, and I'll have your paycheck."

That wasn't _quite_ so bad, Sam decided. All else failed, and he could just kick the kid out of his cab, just like he did the druggies, right?

So why did he get the feeling it wouldn't be _quite_ so easy?

In either case, it was probably late that same day that the kid finished polishing Sam up. The entire thing had just been more trying on his nerves, and he wondered about a thousand times why _Bumblebee_ seemed to enjoy it so much. At no time had Sam even felt slightly inclined to imitate a cat. It was also shortly after he finished that Sam found out _why_ he was being so thorough ... and nervous. Even the sensors in his 'glass' could tell that his hood was shiny as it had been the first time he'd managed to transform and the materials were new ... though not the incredibly distracting gloss of Bumblebee's freshly cleaned armor or Sideswipe's candy coated curves.

(And okay, that was a very disturbing thought right there. Sam took a shocked moment to try to figure out if he was getting -- er -- preoccupied with Sideswipe, and to his relief discovered that _no_, he wasn't. He could ... er, _sort of_ handle being preoccupied with Bumblebee, but extending that anywhere -- _no_. Just ... no.)

In either case, it seemed like the kid had some preoccupations of his own, Sam observed as the girl slipped in through a side door into the garage.

"Carly!" the kid greeted her with enthusiastic but embarrassed happiness. "Well, now that you're here ..." he made a move as if showing Sam off. "What do you think about goin' on a ride in her?"

Carly looked at Sam, got this miniature look of embarrassment before she recovered, and smiled at the kid while she tucked a bit of blond hair behind her ears. "You sure you're supposed to be handling a car?" she asked.

It was kind of neat and kind of pathetic that he could now pick up on her sheer lack of flirting or enthusiasm, when the kid couldn't. Sam wanted to groan, but remained dead steel, not even a single vibrating betraying the massive amounts of circuitry, electricity, or processing power that now contained his personality and intelligence. Apparently, even in Britain, teenagers were teenagers. The two bantered back and forth for a bit before climbing in. Already having experience with being driven once before, Sam grudgingly increased the power in his engine until it purred. That was really the only control he needed to exert when pretending to be driven, as the pedals and shifts would work without him. At least he already knew he could seize control back at any time.

The garage opened onto the street, so beyond putting the door up, they were ready to go -- and Sam was rather bored out of his mind. And rather distressed: it took quite a while to come about thinking of it, but he finally realized that he was out of contact with the Lambo jerks, and had no way of getting _back_ into contact with them. He _knew_ they shouldn't have left him alone to go get information online. Well, at least they could _probably_ go find the Autobots, and maybe someone would get around to finding him ... eventually ... beings who live a long time could easily have an equally long 'getting around to' time.

First, he got towed to a mechanic, then he got ... ah. Serviced. Then he's serving as a ... date car? And it was awkward enough _experiencing_ teen mating rituals: he didn't want to _eavesdrop_ on it. Today just _sucked_.

Right. So, if he were two aliens hiding out on a planet that was -- well, _alien_ to them, and had gone off to gather information on how to get from England to America ... what would he do, and where would he go? Well, it wasn't that hard -- Sam only had to think about it for a while before he reasoned that the cars were probably transported on a boat. Which sort of made him want to bang on his head, since he _had_ been at a shipyard, originally.

Maybe he would have a chance to wander off while Carly and her boyfriend went in somewhere to eat ...? But, no, it seemed that their plans were to drive around and make out and --

It was a good thing Sam was parked, or otherwise his sudden tensing might have had some bad repercussions. Surely they wouldn't ... ah, go _pass_ first base, right? Cos if Carly's boyfriend tried to score a home run, Sam was going to _throw_ them out and then take a dunk in the ocean, since he probably couldn't find any soap. Did England have automatic car washes?

It hadn't occurred to Sam until now, while he was trying to ignore the two humans in his cab making awkward 'I like you but I'm not sure you like me' talk, but the life of a car really sucked. And ... yes, he did realize just how bizarre that thought was. It was just -- unless the car was really awesome, _maybe_ it would get washed once a year, but probably never waxed, and who changed out the oil? And made alignments? And teenagers were a car's worst enemy. Yes, even more so than the beach. Teenagers had _no respect_ for a car, trashing out the interior, getting into --

-- _Getting into crashes!_

Sam came to a squealing halt, no thanks to the kid behind the wheel, just in time for the much larger vehicle to swerve pass his bumper with it's horn blaring. He blared his horn back twice after the fact, just before the glaring red tail lights zipped around a corner, then scanned the inside of his cab to get an idea of how the kids were. Both seemed somewhat shaken, and Carly ... well, seemed less than thrilled.

"What is _wrong_ with you?" she demanded, reaching across the small space to punch the kid hard on the shoulder.

"Hey, hey!" he complained, rubbing the spot. "You don't have to get violent ..."

"You almost let that guy hit us!"

Well, they had survived the incident without a scratch, although whether or not the kid would survive his girlfriend's wrath was another question. That was every reason why Sam and Mikaela would have never made a good couple -- aside from the, um, turning into a robot thing, and the -- er, less than .... well, the really weird preoccupation _thing_. With. Um. Bumblebee. Yeah. Okay, comfortably ignoring _that_ right now, thanks anyway.

After an strangely awkward silence, Carly looked over at the boy behind the wheel and said with a very odd tone, "did you even _see_ that truck?"

Right, because the boy had been busy grinning goofily at her and totally not driving. Carly was sharp to have caught on that there had been no panicking right before the brakes set in.

"Well I -- I ... must have," the kid said, a little uncertainly.

Carly made a noncommittal noise, staring at Sam's dashboard. Which reminded him of all the times that he himself had looked at Bumblebee's dash, not really realizing that he was basically surrounded by the stuff serving as Bumblebee's eyes. "I dunno," she said, "where did you say this car came from?"

"Oh, it doesn't matter. Someone just ... yanno, left it behind," the kid replied with a forced air of nonchalance.

"It's just -- it's strange. I feel like it's .... _looking_ at us."

_What the hell!_ Sam hadn't even been paying attention until the idiots tried to wreck him! Ugh.

"Wh-- ... haha, what are you talking about?" the kid said with some disbelief.

"Oh, it's nothing," she snapped irritably, withdrawing and leaning against Sam's door.

Now the kid started to get a little angry. "What? You think this is some -- some _haunted_ car? You think it's _possessed_?"

"I didn't say that!"

Sam dimmed his headlights from their bright setting and settled down for a long episode of bickering, hopefully without any making up. The last thing Sam wanted to ever happen inside of him was making up, and _man_, that was a weird thought. On one hand, he was sorta ... well, adjusting to this whole being a robot thing, and on the other hand ... it sort of surprised him when he remembered just what he was, sometimes. Hadn't it just been a week or so ago that he had been freaking out because he wasn't even sure it was going to be _him_ waking up?

Obviously he had, though -- the metal that made up some of his insides hadn't peeled him off and walked away. He wasn't any more of a monster than _Bumblebee_ was. Was it ... because he didn't _look_ human? Well, he had -- he _had_ known at least a little that he wasn't ... _human_. Honestly, he had -- he woke up with a _pump_ vibrating in his chest, and if that didn't mean he wasn't actually _human_ anymore, what did? But the fear had persisted, so ...

In either case, the kids got their act together and began driving again. To be honest, the more road his tires covered, the less point Sam saw in _not_ just hitting the breaks and ejecting them just like he had the druggies. After all, Carly was already worried about some sort of haunted car as it was. Would it really be that much of a leap? Of course, he was _supposed_ to be laying low, and hadn't his own ... brain-processor thing been freaking out over being conspicuous?

Then he remembered Bumblebee's little trick, and thought if it would work for the Camaro, it might work for him.

First, he induced his engine to make a few strange noises, then cut back the obligatory 'vroom vroom' noises until it was working at the normal level of noise for him -- which was very little. As he coasted to a stop along the road, with no one else in sight, the kid behind the wheel started to get alarmed.

"No ... no! No-no-no!" he said in a panic, trying to do things to the inside of Sam that Sam _really_ didn't like. But, hell, Sam had already been molested and violated, as far as he was concerned, so some kid kicking his pedals and jerking his gear stick and turning the keys wasn't really all that bad. He merely ignored the normal habitual connections the levers had with the rest of his body and was patient.

Carly was groaning in annoyance. It somehow reminded Sam strongly of what happened before, when he had taken Mikaela up to that lookout the first day of the rest of his life, and Bumblebee had pretended to break down. And even though it was the _kid_ who was with the mechanic ... there really wasn't any way Sam was going to take any chances that Carly knew her way around an engine, no how, no way.

It took a few moments of rattling around in his files before he finally managed to trigger the air to start blasting on the teens. It took a bit more fumbling around for that air _not_ to be the air he was pulling off his hot engine, because he wasn't _quite_ sure that it was something that was completely safe to do, so ... er.

That was when Carly got out of the car with a disgusted noise and wrapped her jacket tight around her shoulders as she began to storm off down the road. Nearly immediately, the kid jumped out to chase after her, and _surely_ it couldn't be that easy? He continued to monitor them as they had a confrontation about twenty feet away, then abruptly realized that both of them were outside the car. Or -- er, rather ... _him_. They got out of him. Which totally justified all of his malevolent feelings towards the rather harmless kids, and he finally got around to locking the doors.

As they were talking, Sam figured there was no time like _right now_, and silently began to edge backwards, fully intending to get out of there. Only it was difficult, because the kids were going on a date at night, and it was kind of obvious when Sam started trying to pull away -- or maybe it didn't have anything to do with his headlights and more to do with something else. In either case, the kids glanced at him and he stopped moving and sat there reluctantly while they had their discussion.

Unfortunately for him, Carly either _really_ liked the kid, or he was a smooth talker, because they eventually wound down and came back toward the car. Only ... Sam had locked the doors, so --

"Oh, no. You _didn't_," Carly said, looking across Sam's hood at the boy.

"I _didn't_!" he agreed, looking a short drop from hysteric.

"Great, just great," she said, turning away to lean against Sam's door.

The boy jerked at the door handle a few more times, made an incoherent growling noise, and kicked Sam's tire ... and that was about the moment it all just became too much -- the figurative feather that broke the camel's back, it seemed. For a very long time, Sam had been gathering some pretty hefty, _extreme _emotions, considering that for the past four months he'd been trying to cope with aliens and Sector Seven and Trent and all the nightmares and all the hallucinations and his car that had a vicious sense of humor -- and he hadn't really got a chance to _deal_ with any of it, because every time he came near an outburst that could have relieved it, once again he ended up swallowing it down. The Sam-Rubber-Band had stretched and stretched and stretched, and ... and then all of this happened. All of the waking up suddenly a _robot_ in the _ocean_ off _England_ and being alone and having to figure it all out for himself and then the crash course in being treated exactly like a car and then being chased by Sunstreaker and Sideswipe and having to recharge only to wake up to a mechanic and having to desperately try to reconfigure himself to pretend to be a car and the fluids that they had forced into him and the kids trying (accidentally) to crash him --

Hear that snap? That snap right there was all of Sam's basic good nature breaking in half under the force of pure human frustration and _rage_.

The sudden blare of his car alarm was the only warning the kids got before it suddenly scaled up in volume into an ear piercing shriek and all of the lights went haywire, and the engine in his chest began to rumble as loudly as any. As the kids stumbled back, his wheels spun like crazy -- and Sam didn't know if he intended to run them over or not, but he _didn't_ and so he must not meant to have. Probably. It probably would have been hard to run over someone with a Mini. The kid stumbled and went down hard, dragging Carly with him, and before he knew it, he was transforming and slamming his fists into the asphalt and snarling, "_didn't anyone teach you to be kind to your car_?"

"_Oh my God_!"

Mojo proved useful for something, because Sam had still been a teenager with a teenager's temper and confusion and hatred of the world when they'd gotten him, and he had learned the restraint necessary to vent his frustrations in a very physical way without harming his dog. Without even thinking about it, Sam proceeded to rip up the asphalt while leaving them completely unmarked. They weren't stupid kids, when faced with a monster like Sam -- as he was tossing the handful of dirt and rock aside, they scrambled to their feet and took off running. He ignored the source of his frustration, ripping into the stone wall and knocking rocks flying with a bestial clawing motion. It worked nice -- it worked _well_, and for a second he felt like he was succeeding at _something_ and he proceeded to trash the stone wall a lot more before he glowered after the kids. They were still running -- not in the movie style, 'oh, no, help. Help' way, but in the way Sam had once run from Barricade. After that startled realization, Sam also figured out that he'd somehow taken _pointers_ from that.

He took a moment to assess the extent of the damage he had caused, fan cycling and venting hot air into the night air. A type of program had kicked in, and he took another moment to analyze that for a second before he stood straight again and began to pick his way over the debris to head back to the intersection. It was the least he could do to give the a break by taking some other direction. After all, they'd finally obliged him and got out of the car, right?

Oh, sure, Carly might never step foot around another car judging by her hysterical crying as she ran away, pulled along by her boyfriend, but that might save her life one day ... if she ever ... you know, ran into a Decepticon.

Right. So he was pretty much back where he started ... Alone. In England. With no way of contacting any of the Autobots. _God_, how depressing was that?

Sam stepped over the second wall and onto the road, scanning for vehicles and deciding that he was pretty good to go. He transformed back into his car mode and swerved straight onto the road, coasting along. What Sam couldn't have known was that the Carly knew a man who lived nearby who was a cop, and that they were smarter than Sam in that they didn't say that the car stood up -- they said that some maniac had tried to kill them. After all, Sam was the boy that jumped on that sparkly little bike to chase down what he thought was a thief in his car, at night. And then proceeded to stick around when it became obvious that his car was _not_ a car. This never had boded very well for Sam.

Now, on the part of the police, they had received several reports about a blue Mini Cooper with white racing stripes had wrecked a bunch of cars and caused a major traffic collision a few weeks ago, then there was some sort of race that caused a huge pile up involving a blue Mini with white racing stripes, so when these two kids said that it wasn't far, the gentleman called in and then went and got into his police car and drove off in pursuit of this maniac, with backup on the way.

So, shortly, Sam had no less than three cops on his tail, out there on the rural edges of a town. _Fuck, fuck_, he thought gracelessly.

Well, he'd already raced against Sunstreaker and Sideswipe, right? How hard could it be to shake off these guys? Um ... ignoring that he hadn't managed to shake off those two jerks ... but they were Cybertronian, weren't they? He should be able to do it when it was just _people_ in their dumb metal horses.

Dear God, was he even _listening_ to himself? What the hell was wrong with his brain? Processor. Circuits. Whatever.

Sam gunned it, feeling that frustration creep back up on him. He knew _these_ guys, at least, had radios and would be talking to each other, and he was just so irritated that he thought it might just be easier to _take them out_. But what kind of thinking was that? He couldn't -- he couldn't _hurt_ anyone, if not because that was _wrong_, then because he looked like one of the Autobots right now and he didn't want his actions to ... make a mess.

But he could, possibly, _out run_ them. How fast had he been going, before? Ridiculously fast, he knew that ... and surely they wouldn't be able to keep up?

Heedlessly, he took off, tires gripping the road and giving him better traction than dead rubber could any day. Surely there was some sort of urban section nearby -- ? Ah ha! Sam cut a corner close, friction warming his tires as he went against the natural turn of the axle, and he thumped over the edge of the sidewalk carelessly. Sidewalks were promising -- Sam could fit places the police cars chasing him _couldn't_. All he had to do was find some kind of hard rail or hand rail or -- that would do, he thought, catching the line of poles on the edge of his scanners. It seemed like it'd been made for the exact purpose of keeping vehicles off the walk way, but -- haha, Sam could fit.

He swerved wildly around it, flashing his lights tauntingly, picking up pace without the fear of being rammed. Somewhere along the way, he'd lost one of the police cars, and he just was grateful that he hadn't noticed a crash if there was one. One down, two to go. Carelessly, he turned onto some steps -- which turned out to be a bad idea, since it scrambled his sensors pretty good and he came off them feeling a little dizzy and nauseous. How in the world could alien robots feel _nauseous_? Who knew? It was probably another thing where his processor was trying to translate it into something he was familiar with.

Alright, so he had two cops to deal with, who had incidentally followed him down the stairs, and he hoped that they felt half as ill as he did. Sam made a wild run for the actual road, but didn't shake either one of them, trying to figure out what to do with the last two. Actually, running away from the two of them reminded him of running away from Sunstreaker and Sideswipe, only these guys were staggered. Sunstreaker and Sideswipe had not only been more maneuverable, but they had covered more angles -- possibly because they knew that _Sam_ was more maneuverable.

Slowly, a plan formed in his head.

Instead of actively trying to escape the two cops, he slowly goaded them into higher and higher speeds, and then as he figured they couldn't go any faster, he took a suicidal dash straight toward a building. At the exact moment the algorithms churned out that he should hit the breaks, he did. The police cars swerved wildly, but they couldn't keep up with alien precision that their mechanics were based off of. Of course, the algorithms of safety that Sam had been reacting to weren't the ones that warned him of his _own_ safety, but rather the safety of the cars following him. One of the police cars managed to swerve in time to prevent a collision, but the other hit with just enough force to expel the air bag. Sam gave himself a figurative pat on the back and kicked it into reverse.

Two down, one to go.

He picked up speed again, dodging around what little traffic was still out at this time of night, the cop on his bumper. He swerved painfully, but that one last determined police man wasn't _about_ to be shaken, and -- the edge of the police car tapped the left edge of his bumper rather sharply -- he was out for blood, Sam realized as he very nearly lost control of himself. Hitting the brakes to keep control, he accidentally dropped back to run alongside the cop ... probably giving him a very clear view of the inside of the cab, which had no one in it.

Something very bad might have ensued just then, because being revealed set off all kind of unhappy programs and made Sam a little desperate, and he wasn't distracted enough to be completely ignorant of his own frustration ... but it just so happened that more than the police had been listening to the radio, and just about at that moment, two other vehicles appeared, swerving into the entire mess. Sunstreaker had pulled in next to the cop, and Sideswipe revved his engine in what was practically Sam's ear. What was _with_ Sideswipe and pulling up next him nearly close enough to clip him?!

The man in the cop car looked vaguely bewildered as both Lamborghinis rumbled in unison, and Sam decided suddenly that maybe he didn't want to be in the middle of a Lamborghini sandwich. He hit the breaks, dropping back sharply -- and almost not sharply enough. Sideswipe and Sunstreaker swerved in, catching the cop car in between, and then gunned it, taking off far faster than the police car could go. It was pure coincidence that it was only then that they were getting out of the urban tangle, roaring down the road -- and Sam didn't dare let the two of them out of his sights again. Once clear of immediate humanity, the Lamborghinis jerked their wheels sharply and took a hairpin turn in the middle of the road.

If the two of them hadn't been living creatures, there was no possible way that one could have stopped his spin and the other could have spun just that extra amount that allowed the car to slip out from between them and take off. It practically flew, smashing through a fence, lunging into the air with a roar of the motor, and landed nose-first into a gully with tires spinning helplessly.

It had happened too quickly -- with a slight squeak of faux-rubber on asphalt, Sam squeezed through the gap between the Lamborghinis that had been previously filled by the cop car, and came to a shrieking halt parallel to the pathetic whooping whine of the siren. A sort of mindless determination had taken over, and he didn't even hardly realize he was transforming before moved toward it. In two long steps, he reached the car and bent down to peer into the cab, but ...

Warnings ceased as the high pressure in his body -- fluid in the lines -- was allowed to ebb, and his processor fell as silent and still as he was, one hand on the ground and the other just set to the car. The cop was alive ... unconscious, but alive. Once his scanner finished cataloging the bits of the officer he could see and determined there were no serious surface wounds, he pulled back. For a surreal moment, he tried to comprehend what had just happened.

A part of his processor reminded him that he'd been causing car wrecks and terrorizing humans without the barest flicker of concern, which was ... Sam had come to disassociate himself from the human race, a little, maybe as a result of the time that S7 had captured him (either because they hadn't treated him as human or maybe because he didn't want to believe _his species_ was capable of that, he couldn't tell, his logic processors saying that the circuits involved in such a phenomena being _unreliable_ at best) but ... to disregard their safety, and well being ... especially as an Autobot, now …

It just hadn't occurred to him that his reckless disregard was exactly that until now that the two aliens had carelessly violated the 'protect the humans' rule that Optimus Prime had set down. They were unmistakably Autobots, he'd spotted the symbol stamped to Sunstreaker's shoulder, on a piece of armor he realized probably fit into the recess of that dip in the Lamborghini's side. Sideswipe had one to match it, stamped on the left side of his chest. They were Autobots, but they either didn't know or didn't care that they were supposed to _protect_ humanity, and Sam had just been reacting to their derogatory word for humanity when he'd snapped at them, because he'd been remembering Megatron's purred '_maggot_', and that was something he would rather forget.

And now the two aliens had just ... flung a person, doing his job, into a ditch and they might have taken his life if the soil hadn't proved soft enough to absorb the impact. They might have taken his life, they might have --

"You okay, Boxy?"

Straightening, he turned to look at the two aliens. Sunstreaker was still on his wheels, but Sideswipe had retaken his bipedal form and was looking at Sam with those fathomless light-emitting optics ... the icy Arctic blue of deep glacial crevices seen on documentaries ... Sam took a self-conscious moment to assess himself, and discovered that _yes_, he was okay. His paint wasn't even scratched, and his body had been processing the fluids and was using them to ease the bend of his joints and the shifting of his gears. He was better than he _had_ been, and even the sensors that had scrambled over the stairs had come back online with nary a hiccup. It was just ...

He looked at them again, watching as Sunstreaker began to unfold, watching the strange movements and the alien symmetry. He had gotten _numb_ to Cybertronians, somewhere along the way ... he knew Bumblebee and Ratchet and Ironhide and Prime, and he'd gotten so numb to the entire thing that he had _forgotten_ ... Giant robot _aliens_. Not just that, but _warriors_, he reminded himself -- _soldiers_. Soldiers that didn't differentiate between civilian and enemy casualties. Something felt tight and uncomfortable in his alien body, but he didn't know what it was. Without responding, he stepped away from the wreck and started toward the road, taking shorter strides this time. By the time he got there, Sunstreaker was finished standing, and Sam didn't think. Not really.

"You _left_ me there," he snapped, coming to a stop right in front of the red Lambo, having already accepted the fact that _this one_ was the one that gave even the slightest slag about him. He had, somehow, come to trust the red one in the thirty minutes he'd known them, just a little bit, because no matter how scatter minded he seemed, he'd been taking _responsibility_ for Sam when he felt that Sunstreaker would have just washed his hands of him.

"Hey," Sideswipe protested, "you're the one that took off and got -- chased, or whatever, Boxy --"

Thrusting his claws before him, he shoved hard at the taller bot's chest, actually managing to make Sideswipe stumble back a little. "You left me there and I got _towed_!" he interrupted, that tight thing in him quivering. "Those guys took me in to a _mechanic_, you -- you --" He couldn't think of a word that sounded right.

The move was so casual that he didn't even see it coming -- he saw but didn't _think about_ the yellow claw that reached out and hit him over the head, right about where those spikes were just _miniseconds_ before. It made his head ring, and Sam swayed before staggering back away from both of them as he clutched at his vibrating helmet, completely disoriented. It didn't last long, though ... but he took another long step away from the two mechs to put himself firmly out of arms' reach, and he looked at them and clenched his claws into fists.

The three of them assessed each other for a long moment, and Sam got the dismal feeling under cautious optics that ... even though these were Autobots, even though these were _Cybertronians_, and Sam kind of _identified_ with Cybertronians long before he knew he was becoming one ... even if all of that was true, these were _strangers_. He didn't know them and they didn't know him. Suddenly, the ocean separating him from America and the others never seemed bigger.

Finally, he pointed back at the cop car. "You could have killed him," he said, and his voice seemed strangely flat compared to the quivering tight thing inside him.

"Yeah, but -- it was chasing you," Sideswipe said, sounding completely out of his depth and confused and _not liking it_. It was just too obvious that he _did not understand_. Sunstreaker stood silent and still next to his comrade, and there didn't seem to be anything to say. Sam was just a human masquerading as an alien, and the two real aliens didn't understand him at all -- and he didn't understand them. "You were -- well, you weren't _in danger_, but it was -- chasing you, and ..."

Sideswipe didn't understand why Sam was upset that someone could have died. Sideswipe knew that Sam hadn't been in danger, but he'd taken the option of _removing the threat_, no matter how mild, and Sam remembered: It would just be easier if he could _take them out_.

_What was happening to him_?

They stared at him and he stared back, and both were too obviously floundering over this miscommunication, this cultural clash over how to respond to nonfatal threats. Finally, Sam said, "can you --" he struggled with what he was trying to say for a moment, before he finally finished with, "can you at least radio for help?"

"Sure, but why --"

"Would you?" he demanded.

For a moment, they were silent and Sam was sure they were going to deny him, and then Sideswipe said, "it's done."

He forced his claws to unclench. "Alright. Then. Then we should get out of here."

They exchanged looks and then transformed, and Sam was forced to follow suit. Even if he didn't have any of that mechanical adrenaline to help, he had to do it, but at least he didn't mess up and pass out. Sideswipe pulled away first, followed as one by the other, and Sam brought up the rear, somewhat reluctantly. They were maybe five miles into the darkness when suddenly, it came in as if they were standing right next to each other: "(on the other hand,)" Sideswipe said brightly, as if offering a boon, "(we figured out how to get to America.)"

Sam wasn't even sure he wanted to know.

-+-

Will's phone was ringing again.

It was hard to even vaguely try to convince himself to get up. As a matter of fact, the only reason why he succeeded was because in his infinite helpfulness, he had decided to get a phone with the most annoying ring ever that he knew would wake him up. It was just that he didn't _know_ what it meant, when he got the phone that would wake him up. Will really, really needed his sleep right now, cos he'd stayed up until one in the morning on the web cam with Sarah and Annabelle -- babies didn't have the slightest concept of nighttime meaning sleep -- and ... he pried his face out of the pillow, glaring blearily at the clock. It was three in the morning.

Why did everything seem to happen at three in the morning?

He forced his sleep-drugged muscles to move, eventually rolling over and out of bed and staggered into the nearby wall. He used the wall to get over to the table with the lamp and the phone, and sat down awkwardly, rubbing at his eyes. The lamp's light blinded him and made his dry eyes water painfully when it switched it on, and then he squinted at the phone.

Shit. Government line.

He set his left elbow to the table and used his knuckles to prop up his head, grabbing the phone carelessly in his right and nearly hanging back up on accident. Somehow he managed to get the phone to his ear and slurred in, "y'ello?"

The very crisp and much-to-awake voice of some government jerk or another asked, "Captain William Lennox?"

He tried to say yeah, and it came out more like 'yer', and his waking mind just barely kept him from asking which male the official _thought_ was going to be answering the phone in Will's bedroom. Not smart to get snippy with government officials, no matter how much it annoyed him that they were calling at three AM and he hadn't gotten any sleep.

"Good, just the man I wanted to speak to." Obviously, or he would not be calling Will's phone and asking for Will. "It's come to our attention that the bit of excitement the other day in Las Vegas resulted in a new recruit."

For a second, Will shook himself out of the doze he was sinking into despite the lights and his knuckles and the uncomfortable chairs. New recruit? Oh -- ah. The alien. "Yeah," he said with some difficulty, clearing his voice of the lingering sleep, "retrieved an alien. One of the friendlies."

"Ah-hah," the official said, like Will had admitted to smoking crack just like he'd suspected all along. "So help me out here ... _where_ is the information on this alien?"

Nonexistent? It had been fairly obvious to Will during the fight and the reunion that the robot they'd saved was a little -- er. _Messed up_. Then again, being a POW did that to people. Will knew -- he'd rescued POWs in his time across seas. He hadn't seen the logic in disturbing the robot more than he already was by asking pointed questions, since no one wanted a fourteen foot alien excited. Yeah, so he was a _small_ alien, he was still more than twice the height than any of the humans and had at least a ton on them in weight.

"Must have gotten lost in the network," Will said, running his hand over the short bristles of his hair. He could never grow it out now -- he'd gotten too used to the convenience of having it short. "Maybe I hit save instead of send -- I dunno."

"Uh-huh," the official said insincerely. "Then could you do me a favor and correct that -- right now? It'd be a real help if you'd just pull that information up and hit that send button."

Something in his tone finally set Will off -- possibly only now because he was only now even slightly aware that it wasn't all a dream. "Oh, sure, not a problem -- hey, just a question, who'sit I'm talkin' to? Sorry, you know, waking up slows me down sometimes if there's not bombs going off." He chuckled insincerely into the mouthpiece.

The guy on the line didn't sound nearly so hot, anymore, when he said: "the desk of Ian Bryce."

One of the various CIA officials aware of the aliens, Will remembered. "Do me a really big favor," he said, oozing sincerity, "put Mr. Bryce on the phone."

"Mr -- Bryce is out at the minute, but --"

"Probably out to bed, am I right?" Will asked with faux sympathy. "I feel you, man, every time the big cheese made me stay up all night while he went home to his bed and slept -- _Listen_, you little shit," he said sharply, interrupting his own monologue when the guy tried to say something. "Next time you fucking call me at three in the fucking morning, you and the government can deal with the aliens _yourself_, without my help. You think you have it rough with Ian Bryce going home to sleep and making you file all night -- I'd like to see you be in the middle of a goddamned fire fight between the aliens, see how long_ you_ can keep the job. Get yourself a goddamn cup of espresso and _deal with it_." He slammed the phone down and glowered at the lights that indicated that he had no other calls waiting.

He continued to glower at it for a bit, then realized he was too pissed to go back to sleep and his day was going to start already. "Shit," he muttered. It was hard to remember to censor himself at three in the morning while dealing with government ass holes. Will definitely didn't want to be cussing around his daughter, but ... com'n. Special exceptions had to be made.

With a sigh, he plucked the phone back up and pressed it to his ear while he dialed the extension for the base. It didn't even ring when the phone made a weird warbling sound. "English, please," he asked, "it's too fucking early in the morning to listen to this shit."

A shocked second later, the alien said, "sorry, Will, I didn't expect any of the humans to be up right now. What can I do for you?"

"Send me an escort to base," he requested tiredly, "I don't think it's safe for me to drive."

"Not a problem. You want anyone in particular?"

Will thought about it for a moment, then said, "someone who won't mind doing the job quietly. I want to get this over with so I can get some goddamned coffee."

"You know," the alien said, "surely having a stimulant on top of such little amount of rest --"

"_Blaster_," he said sharply, not even realizing he'd managed to remember this alien's name since he had pretty much come in, dropped off his information, and holed himself up in a room and never came out. He thought he remembered some of the other aliens mentioning that Blaster was a noncombatant communication specialist, but that he'd gotten separated from everyone when everyone split in search of the All Spark and had been on his own the entire time. Which meant he'd had to fight anyway, when his true specialty was creating communication signals that flew under most of the enemy's radars. "That's the way humans do it. Now, send me an escort. Please."

"You're the boss -- well, not _the_ boss, _the_ boss is Optimus --"

Will hung up.

He took a shower and got into his work gear. Sure, being a ... a home-body at the base they let the aliens have meant that Will _could_ have dressed in a Hawaiian shirt and khaki shorts, but he preferred to be a little profession about it. Sadly enough, though, being in this base was a lot like a modern day MASH for some of the soldiers. Will wished that Kilroy would stop sunbathing in that god awful Speedo, but no one crossed Kilroy if they could help it. He got that nickname for a reason.

But he and his men were _professionals_, dammit. They would keep wearing their gear no matter what ... because truth be told, a soldier never knew when the enemy would attack, and Will and his men were the human representatives in their war for Earth's survival. It paid to always be prepared.

Blaster, of course, sent the baby-blue Miata. Will stared at it blankly for a moment were it sat still and silent outside of the house he'd chosen as his own, took another moment to wipe the rest of the sleep out of his eyes, and tromped down the sidewalk to it. Of all of the aliens he could have sent, in all of their remarkably awesome car forms, he sent the Miata. Not for the first time, Will wondered if they understood more about humans than they let on. It was hard to tell, and this was another hard-to-tell instance, because despite being baby-blue and a Miata, and if Will remembered correctly, having a _feminine_ silver face, the alien just opened the door and drove him silently and easily to the base and dropped him off -- exactly the way he'd wanted, only he wasn't sure he was going to get from the aliens.

He peered after it in bemusement for a while before turning back around and going inside the base.

Somehow, whenever he came into the base after most of the humans had gone to sleep, he kept expecting the aliens to be having some kind of weird disco party. Or maybe that was just his sleep deprivation talking ... or maybe it wasn't. The door shut with a clang behind him, and all of the flashing lights went off.

Will stared at the virtual parking lot full of various kinds of vehicles, all of which had been going off like strobe lights on steroids just a second earlier, and were now sitting there as if he had just walked in on them doing something embarrassing. For a moment, Will wondered if he'd just witnessed alien robot sex -- then the idea freaked him out so badly that he shoved it to the furthermost corner of his mind. "What the hell was that?" he asked, looking around.

" ... a game," the white hummer reluctantly said. Unlike the other girl-sounding robots, her voice was a bit lower and slightly husky, and -- ... a least one of the soldiers had bemoaned that she was a robot because she sounded _hot_. Will didn't hear it, but maybe that was _one_: because he was actually happily married and desperately in love with his wife and daughter, and _two_: because it was an alien and he'd gotten the whole 'no such thing as female robots' talk from Ratchet the one time he'd wondered if they shouldn't send the small feminine-sounding aliens into battle. He couldn't quite grasp _no-gender_ aliens and settled on thinking of the feminine sounding ones as cross dressers. Not the most politically correct way to think of them, he was sure, but as long as he didn't give it away ...

"A game," he repeated, eyes flickering over all of the aliens cautiously. "What kind of game?"

"It's ... a bit like rock-paper-scissors, musical chairs, and dance-dance-revolution all at the same time," she explained awkwardly, "only most of it goes on over radio comm in consideration of you, our allies. It's a -- a loud game. What is it you need, William? We thought everyone would be sleeping by now."

"Well, you know, I'd _like_ to be sleeping," he said acerbically, and maybe that wasn't _nice_, but that little snot had pissed him off, "but apparently the good ol' CIA can't wait for the information on -- on ..."

"Red Alert," Elita-One supplied gently.

"Which ever," he said, in no mood to worry about offending the aliens because he had a hard time remembering which one had what name.

"That might prove difficult, William Lennox," she said, shaking off her car shape as he took off toward the inner parts of the base. The shadows and his peripheral vision informed him that the aliens had taken up their game again, but Elita-One strode after him.

"I don't care," he snapped, "I need that information if officials are going to be calling me at all hours. I need my _sleep_, but to get my sleep, I've got to take care of paperwork, apparently, so --"

"William Lennox," Elita-One said, nearly stepping directly over him to stand in his way, sliding from side to side to block him every time he tried to step around her.

He sighed, stepping back to glower up at the alien. "_What_?"

She bent then, to bring her face closer to him. "Red Alert was captured by Decepticons," she said softly.

"Yeah, so?" he demanded.

Hesitating for a moment, she said, "though the comparison is uncomfortable, remember that we are technobiological -- what can be done to a computer, can be done to us."

It was way too early to have riddle-filled conversations with aliens. Elita-One was prone to way too many vague phrases. "Put it to me plainly," he said flatly.

She looked at him gravely and said, "Red Alert was hacked, and infected with a virus."

It was the word _virus_ that did it. Will, like every other American that had ever used the Internet, had once had a computer that had gotten a virus. For a moment, he tried to comprehend what it meant to alien robots, and couldn't understand it -- maybe it was just because he hadn't gotten coffee yet, or maybe it was just because no one could fully comprehend what it meant to be a _robot_ but the robots themselves. "What does that mean?" he asked.

Elita-One spread her hands out, gesturing with eerie precision and grace. "Red Alert may never have a place among us ever again," she said, and though there was nothing to hint it, Will got the feeling that she felt sad. "He was once a brave young mech with the soundest programming that any could have, but ... Ratchet is attempting to fix it, but it's dangerous work, and as fast as he develops a 'vaccine' for it, it mutates. He ... jumps at shadows, and his software is so scrambled that he attempts communication with mechs that aren't even there ..."

Confusing story short, Red Alert was loonier than Uncle Billy Joe Bob in the middle of the Apocalypse. "Ah." Will's mind was working, finally, and he was trying to figure out the repercussions of this and before he knew what he was saying, he was looking up at her and saying, "you _can't_ tell anyone else this. Get me the information on Red Alert somehow, but you can't tell _anyone_."

If they told _anyone_ that the robots were susceptible to viruses, there was no telling what would happen -- and if anyone found out that a fourteen foot tall alien war machine was effectively _insane_, then at the very least they would demand that it be put down like a rabid animal. And if the government started to make demands like that of the _aliens_, then there was no telling how they would react ... and if the aliens agreed out of some strange protocol, then there was no telling what the government would start asking them for next.

She studied him gravely, the intensity of those blue lights going up and down like those stupid singing Christmas lights, and she said, "I will succeed at this for you, William. At first I wondered, but ..." She stood. "You should proceed to the lobby, where the humans keep the coffee maker. I will retrieve the information you require."

It was a bit of a relief, but there was something nagging at him as he watched her move toward the lift that would get her to the lower levels, were Ratchet's lair was. "You wondered what?" he called after her.

With that same alien precision, she pushed the button to open the door to the lift, then turned to regard him again as she waited for the door to scroll high enough for her to fit under. Softly, she said: "I wondered why Optimus Prime would deign to protect humanity. I think, perhaps, I know what it is. Receive your stimulant, William -- do not concern yourself with this."

Will didn't know _what the hell_ 'deign' meant, but he thought maybe he was better off not knowing. It didn't sound like it meant something he'd _like_.

* * *

- FYI, Sam doesn't get a designation until much later in the chapters because Sunstreaker and Sideswipe are satisfied with Boxy, and Sam doesn't know the first thing about designations. So, when they group back up with the Autobots is when you can expect Sam's designation to be revealed. Depending on whether or not I go through with this idea I have, his designation might make some people pretty angry.

- Just to give you guys a heads up, since I forget, sometimes, that while I end up revealing something to ONE reviewer and leave the rest of you in the dark (accidentally), as a newly activated mech, Sam is indeed imprinting (if you go back to chapter 11, there's a part of the coding that determines that Sam's Primary Data Files are incomplete, and starts up the Imprinting Application). The twins have realized that Sam is imprinting, and kind of like alligators, all Cybertronians respond to imprinting mechs in a helpful manner. (Which, consequently means that Optimus Prime was pulling a nasty trick on the Decepticons by using Bumblebee as a messenger way back when -- even Decepticons have that coding, so they couldn't really bring themselves to shoot Bumblebee. Blow up the ground he walks on, beat him up bunches, yes ... kill him, not so much.)

- UPDATE SCHEDULE: because someone asked, and also to save everyone some time, I try to update once a week – but NOT every seven days, if that makes any sense at all. Sometimes the chapter isn't ready on Monday, or I can't get access to Internet to post it. I might not get a day off until Thursday, yasee?


	15. JAZZ'S INTERMISSION

**Jazz's Intermission: More than Sixty  
-+-**

It had been seventy-eight days since Jazz had come back from the edge of oblivion.

Oblivion was a dark place, comparable to the darkness before activation that the young bots whispered of among themselves. Jazz understood why they might have such a reaction ... he only had one record -- barely that -- of the time between the point that life had been breathed into his chassis and the point at which they had brought him online. It was barely anything ... back when Jazz had been built, a mech wasn't built and a Spark wasn't spared until he was needed. There was none of the phenomena that cropped in Cyberton's heyday, when mechs started reporting The Dark ... that period of awareness before activation. And Bumblebee, and the counterparts and now Moonracer, they all spoke of the Long Dark, a word they all had in common like they all knew what they were talking about without researching it. Without even knowing of another newly activated mech being around.

_"Oh wow," a young Sideswipe murmured, the identical form of his counterpart standing beside him as they peered into the vast reaches of space, solar radiation filtered through space dust so that it glittered in vibrant shades of purple and pink and the distance sun burned dull red. "Oh wow ... I didn't know there would be so much to look at, after the Long Dark. Isn't it something, 'Streaker?"_

_"Forgive me," the young mech begged, ER transmitter whining as he bent to Jazz's level, "I -- I didn't know. I don't know -- I didn't want to, but ... but they took me from the Long Dark ... it didn't seem too much until -- forgive me ..."_

_"I think I like this planet best," she announced cheerfully, "I mean, sure ... it's only got one moon, but the moon it's got is the largest, prettiest moon I've ever seen. It reminds me of Elita-one, you know? She's the one that woke me from the Long Dark ..."_

So Jazz imagined that what he remembered from his period between being Sparked and being activated must be a lot like that. It was dark, and deep, and endless ... and though he was probably the oldest bot around, other than Ironhide, he probably understood the youngest bots better than anyone else. Every time ... every time he was offlined, in the nonpermanent sense of the word, he got a taste of what the newest generations knew for vorns before they were found.

They didn't make mechs like they used to, and unlike when Ironhide bemoaned the fact, Jazz didn't mean it badly. It was just ... he was an old bot, meant to be efficient at many tasks, and he wasn't sure that this new way they'd been making them was best. Mechs meant for speed, mechs meant for communication, mechs meant repair, mechs meant to rebuild ... a sufficiently equipped bot could do any of these functions and more. Instead, someone -- or maybe, a factory, one of the 'Great Mothers' -- had decided that it would be more efficient to have just one bot perform one duty, and ...

In either case, Jazz had been built to do many things, and succeed at all of them, but mostly he'd been built to _last_. That's why he always ended up in such terrible condition, always ending up locked into stasis for a while after his repairs were done, always waking up to the darkness inside whatever hole Ratchet had set up shop in this time. And if that sounded contradictory, that was just because Jazz ended up there because he took the worst missions for himself, and no one objected because they knew what his function was, and even if he had lost height and weight over the vorns of being rebuilt after some mistaken mission or another, he always _survived_.

To be truthful, the wait had been a short one this time. He'd woken up in the comfortably dark inner space of some metal building when his last recorded moment was of fighting Megatron. Megatron -- now _there_ was a piece of malfunctioning bolts if there ever was one. He'd never really thought that the Autobots and the Decepticons would ever get along, but he'd followed his Prime's lead ... it was just misfortunate that it had lead here, that was all. Normally, coming out of a stasis like that was dangerous for anyone in the room, because he naturally thought he was still in the middle of his last moments ... within the grasps of whoever had done whatever to make him go into stasis in the first place.

That time had been nothing like the others. That time he came online with a distinct sense of everything being _right_ with the world. It began to fade quickly, but Jazz, as one of the oldest bots with the most memories of Cybertron ... he _knew_ that feeling ... that pervasive sense of _home_. Like someone coming in quietly over the radio, saying: _it's alright ... come back now_. It was the feeling they all used to have, back when the All Spark was connected to Cybertron. Back before it'd been disconnected, and eventually removed, and eventually jettisoned into space.

(And even then, even in the midst of feeling the fading effect of being able to sense the All Spark so strongly, he had been aware of something going on in his circuits ... only vaguely, only so vaguely, vaguely, vaguely. He had felt the processes that had kicked into gear, and if he had been _any_ other bot, he wouldn't have ever noticed them ... but for the fact that the Decepticons had caught him once [or more than one, more like a hundred times, because there was _always_ someone better than the last time] and they had _done that thing to him_.)

Whatever it had been, it was over.

-+-

Normally, Jazz would never spend too much time considering any one human. For a bot of his experience, each brilliant and tragically brief flare was barely worth recognizing. Maybe it was something in the old hardware that lent itself to such tenacious attachment circuits, but he knew ... he knew that it would be much too easy to become attached to such a _bright_ light. Humans were a marvel, and there were no two alike -- and he didn't mean the way they were put together, but the way they _were_. He had come to know Mikaela after Sam was taken by the Decepticons, and he liked her. She was a sound person, even when suffering such a grief ... even with having her world turned upside down and then hearing about how her father was back in jail so shortly after his release. But he was thankful that Ratchet had stepped up and taken her back under his tutelage.

Jazz didn't _want_ to be attached to a human -- for him, with his experience, the moments seem to flow like sand through his claws, and it would seem like he was just getting to know a young human when they were suddenly old and dying. And Jazz didn't want to suffer that. He didn't want to get attached to almost immediately losing that attachment. It was rough ... he'd been attached to many mechs over the course of his life, and losing each one _hurt_. It scrambled his processor and made the logic centers become so completely _useless_ and --

And it was a bit like what Bumblebee was going through. Though, _Pit_, that one never did things by half-measures. When he'd first met that imprinting mech, Jazz had thought him a lost cause as he joined in on the Decepticons' behavior, but then ... but then they turned to _him_, and that 'Con-in-training just _couldn't_. And when he couldn't, he not only _didn't_, but started a fight so distracting that Jazz escaped. Then he had thrown himself completely, to the last nanite, into the pursuit of being an Autobot, and then when his three vorn probation was over, he tossed himself straight to the stars. It was _Bumblebee_ who defied Megatron come slag or the Pit, and it was _Bumblebee_ who found Earth and sent out the transmission that the All Spark was _there_, and it was _Bumblebee_ who retrieved the All Spark.

When that mech decided he wanted something, there wasn't _anything_ standing in his way ... for long, anyway. He'd set every processor on being everything that Prime could possibly need in another soldier to stand by his side, and he'd proven to be exactly that, and -- but then he was asking to stay with the boy. And Optimus never extended the invitation, and Jazz knew that he was only waiting until the boy died, but then ... Jazz remembered when he came back to the land of the living, and realizing everything _wasn't_ alright. The flesh creature, the Samuel Witwicky, was collapsed at his side with a piece of the All Spark, but ... Jazz's optics of any, hardwired as they were to a ridiculous setting, could see it: the sparks of loose circuitry deep within the fluid filled orbs. And when he'd reached out to touch the human, it came with that same sense of _right_, that same sense of whispered: _come back, come back ... home is here_.

Of course Bumblebee never did things by half-measures. If he was going to settle suddenly and actually get _attached_ to anything, let alone a _human_, it wouldn't just be any human. He wasn't going to settle for anything less than the newest vessel for the All Spark. And while Jazz didn't really feel like thinking much about _humans_, the All Spark was another matter entirely.

It had to be because Jazz had been out of the loop during his repair, but he thought he might just see things a little more clearly than his companions. Or maybe it was a result of those things that had started inside his codes the moment Samuel Witwicky set All Spark hands on his chassis and brought him back with Optimus' energy. And Jazz would _like_ to say that the things he saw weren't true ... but even if it was impossible, there was no other explanation.

No one had been sure that any Cybertronian would live once they'd destroyed the All Spark. When they had, it had seemed like a miracle ... but Jazz thought it was more the hand of Primus.

What were they supposed to do with the All Spark trapped into such a tiny, fragile form? The thought of all of that _pure_, wild energy existing within a form made of _flesh_ ... even for that short bit of time that Jazz had been out of commission ... it was daunting. He'd been worried, yes ... taking a moment to get the boy alone, just so that he could try to figure out what he was supposed to do about what _only he knew_. The Cube had been an awkward vessel, yes, but ... it was much sturdier than this fleshy form, and still sturdier than any Cybertronian form.

Perhaps the All Spark just resented being tossed into space like it was unwanted, left alone and abandoned until they showed up _just to destroy it_. Or attempt to destroy it. The All Spark was mysterious ... and though the Cube made it helpless, Jazz thought that was all going to change when it was finished with the boy. Being a Cybertronian would be much less noticeable than being a Cube, it was true ... and if something like humanity could survive their world and each other, then he'd just have to trust Sam to protect their source of life.

It just went to figure that of all things, Bumblebee would get attached to the newest vessel of an unbelievable energy that was just learning that it could control it's own destiny.

-+-

"(Jazz -- _Jazz. __**Jazz**_!")

"(Shoot -- no need to yell, baby-bot,)" Jazz commed back, shaken out of his contemplation of the World Wide Web. It may prove difficult to fend off an attack if the Decepticons choose to hack the network again, but Jazz wasn't incredibly worried. Starscream certainly wouldn't prove to be any real cohesive force -- with Skywarp in the picture, it was becoming increasingly likely that the fliers would lose interest in attacking the Autobots at all. Megatron had always been the driving force, and if he hadn't been a flier, there was no way Starscream would have joined the escapade, and now that Starscream had another flier around ...

Well, fliers were short on attention, basically. Even a planet like Cybertron had it's share of atmospheric phenomena, which meant that a flier had to be _flexible_, and somehow flexibility always meant _unreliability_.

So the real issue that Jazz was worried about was the other Decepticons that didn't take such a form. Traveling by wheel or hover took _forever_, and so it took a lot of dogged insistence to be programmed in ... and once a mech with wheels had set them on a path, it was hard to get them off of it. Skywarp taking Sam had been a gesture, more than a power move that most of the other Autobots thought it was, but Jazz still remembered a time _before_ fliers. Skywarp came waving his sensors back around Starscream, and in revenge for being abandoned, Starscream demanded a peace gesture. That Skywarp failed to keep a grip on the boy didn't matter at all -- flaring his thrusters under the Autobot's scanners was the true gesture. They hadn't heard from either flier since, though Jazz expected that to change when more showed up.

"(If there wasn't any need, I wouldn't have done it,)" Bumblebee sent dryly.

"(Hey, if I recall, you ignored me once or twice when I contacted you, at least for a moment,)" he said defensively.

"(Yes, but at least I opened the communication to a two-way,)" he grumbled. "(You just sat there like you were practically deactivated.)"

Bumblebee always stressed over Jazz's wellbeing, even if he had adjusted to the 'always coming back slagged from missions' part of his life. Then again, Bumblebee didn't really like any of the Autobots being damaged. "(Sorry,)" he said, but he didn't really mean it. "(You know me -- all these transmissions going on at the same time are hard to filter through, sometimes.)" Because they really only had one receptor, unlike the humans, who separated each frequency into another machine, and therefore cluttered the airwaves with so much transmission pollutions.

There was a pause, and then Bumblebee sent back apologetically, "(no, sorry, I forget that I've had more experience ... I've lost track of all the mods and filters I've programmed in to deal with this world.)"

It was a troubling thought. Every time they landed anywhere strange, they naturally adapted to their environment, just as Bumblebee had. They wrote programs and filters and installed mods to help them operate at something approaching acceptable levels ... but then it became difficult to leave the place they had adapted to. To discard all of that information and programs and filters as junkware, to destroy it as it was no longer required and simply cluttering their memory space ... it was hard to just _cast aside_ all of that work and experience.

Then again, if they could regroup on Earth, even for a little while ... the humans produced long waves. Jazz could barely remember what long waves _were_, up until he'd gone to show Sam the recording he made of Ratchet giving Prime a checkup after he recovered from the power drain. He had forgotten, but eventually the uncomfortably short waves the human was producing slowed and lengthened ... it felt good. It felt like sitting out in the sun in his alt mode soaking up the solar radiation. And though it was a cure for LWD, it was a dangerous one ... theoretically, once everyone relaxed and started producing their own LW, then they could leave the humans behind without worry, but ... theoretically. Life was rarely so clean.

"(So, what's up, Bumblebee?)" he queried. There had to be some reason that Bumblebee had bothered to venture half way across the country to commlink directly with Jazz.

"(Blitzwing,)" Bumblebee groaned.

Jazz reminded quiet for a startled moment. "(Blitzwing, huh?)"

"(Yes. Two days ago. He, and we _think_ Barricade had something of a disagreement near the boarder of Nevada,)" Bumblebee explained.

"(What in the Pit could those two have to _disagree_ about?)" he wondered.

"(What's to say, with Decepticons?)" the young mech inquired dryly. "(Maybe Barricade called Blitzwing's aft big.)"

Jazz surrendered to the greater knowledge that Bumblebee held of Decepticon ranks. When Jazz was among them, they were always united against a common enemy -- _him_. Bumblebee had been their ally for a short while, and therefore had an insight. "(So, that fragger has landed, huh?)"

"(Triple changers,)" Bumblebee murmured dismally, "(you can't trust --)" The transmission ended abruptly. Three seconds later, Bumblebee came back on. "(Idiot,)" he grumbled. "(Either way, Blitzwing means trouble.)"

Jazz didn't respond for a moment, then said, "(Bumblebee, what just happened?)"

"(What?)"

"(That innocent act ain't foolin' me, dog. What did you just do?)"

Bumblebee was reluctantly silent for a few kliks, then unwillingly admitted, "(a human cut me off. So I bumped him into a ditch.)"

"(_Bumblebee_,)" Jazz hissed with reproach, "(biologicals are _fragile_.)"

"(I know that!)" he snapped defensively, "(I know that better than _you_ do.)"

Jazz didn't respond for a few moments, to give Bumblebee a few moments to process and for his own programs to chastise his actions. Bumblebee _knew_ the difference between what was just and unjust - his Autobot programming assured that. But sometimes ... Bumblebee had one of the more delicately balanced software systems. His programming made sure he knew justice from injustice, and his Spark was gentle, but when that balanced tipped ...

He'd been with Decepticons for a fifth of a vorn. It was more than long enough for some hardwired responses to be bypassed by tenacious software programs written based on what he saw and experienced. Even an Autobot can become a Decepticon in the name of survival. Their engineers hardwired them for morality and justice, but that couldn't change eons of existence spent developing such insanely complex coding that held survival as more important than anything else. Any species that didn't become extinct was hard coded that way. It was hammered into the Spark of them.

And the basic software was there. It bypassed Bumblebee's MN protocols, and now more than ever, Bumblebee was showing his origins. Because he hadn't thought what the Decepticons asked of him was _too much_ until their target was Jazz, and Bumblebee thought that there was some sort of kinship there, since they both had blue optics. But until that point, Bumblebee hadn't thought it was too much.

(Not that he hadn't thought it was a lot, already ... Autobot programming was different than Decepticon. Autobots all had the capacity to harm, and every Spark was different: it might have oscillated wildly enough to create a fighter. But cruelty was something an Autobot had to learn, unlike the Decepticons where control and the urge to destroy were secondary nature.

Not that it was impossible. Oh, no ... Autobots could rival the Decepticons easily for cruelty ... it just took a few vorns, that was all.)

When the radio silence stretched on, Jazz reflected on the clinical way that Bumblebee analyzed the information Blaster didn't have time for, and performed his scouting duties with Arcee without enthusiasm. "(What's buggin' you, Bumblebee?)" he inquired, deliberately weaving tones of relaxation and reassurance into the transmission.

His response was a wordless noise of disbelief and denial. Bumblebee had become so eloquent with his ERT that sometimes he forgot that he could use words at all. Even Jazz had trouble combining all of the information in a way that didn't become garbled, but not Bumblebee. Especially not one who was in full grips of his more lower programming ... everything that had anything to do with the massively negative consequences of grieving. Ratchet had, once, mentioned absently that he didn't even want to _know_ what Bumblebee's software looked like anymore.

Jazz was pretty sure he agreed, because any Cybertronian could look at Bumblebee and the way he looked at the humans, and tell that he _did not value the life he saw_.

(Which wasn't to say he didn't recognize that life -- just that he did not hold it as precious the way he once would have. Then Jazz had to wonder if he had ever, or if Sam and Mikaela were merely special exceptions, except for the fact that these days Mikaela and Bumblebee pretend that they never knew one another at all.)

It had been seventy five days since Sam had been taken by the Decepticons, and Jazz isn't entirely sure that Bumblebee's gonna make it out unscathed.

"(Be patient,)" he suggested, quoting something that had been told to him a lot, recently. "(It'll all work out, baby-bot. You'll see.)"

But Bumblebee just murmured dismally in response.

-+-

Over all, Jazz reflected as he sat next to Hound, watching the hologram displaying this 'daytime soap' called 'The Young and the Restless', only he and Bumblebee had really been affected by the change in the All Spark's vessel. But it was out there, somewhere, and they were both waiting for it to come back, because ...

Bumblebee might be attached to the shape it had taken, but Jazz had another reason entirely, since --

_"I promised you a home,"_ the All Spark in Jazz's dreams tell him, wearing the form of Sam Witwicky but there isn't any _Sam_ there, _"and you're not going to make a liar out of me. Be __**patient**__, please ... I just need a little longer, yet. It's almost done. And then all will be one -- you'll see."_

_"I love all of my children,"_ it assures him, but it seemed troubled by the thought more than confident. _"I love all of my children -- both of them. Living is a hateful thing, Jazz -- I didn't realize how strong my children were until I was forced to do it myself. I don't know how you do it, insisting on sticking with it the way you do. I'd have given up a long time ago ..."_

_"Jazz,"_ the unfamiliar protoform tells him seriously, while Bumblebee before he was stands at alert in the background, watching for something far away, _"we're only the first ... the two of us. It might take a while, but everything's going to change -- because I am the source of all Sparks, and I am Samuel Witwicky, and Witwicky changes everything."_

_Wait_, Sam and the All Spark bid him in his dreams -- and so he does. Waiting is a thing that Jazz is accomplished at, but he doesn't know why they keep telling him to. The changes they're talking about are already here, so there really wasn't any waiting to do at all.

It's been Seventy-Eight days since Jazz was pulled back from Oblivion and sixty-one since he was the mech he used to be.

(On the first day, Primus said: let there be life --

and there was the Cube.)

* * *

- **Edited: 09-08-09** Well, I said I'd rewrite it. :(


	16. And a Bottle of Rum

**1) SORRY IT TOOK SO LONG!** When I gave an estimate of when I'd have it up, that was before I got my work schedule and found out what days I'd have free! It was stupid of me, I know!  
**2) This is pretty much a crack chapter of crack.** It kept not wanting to be written, and so ... crack. Remember back at chapter one, when I said the Genre was angst and crack and angst? Well ... here's your crack!  
3) Still haven't had time to rewrite Jazz's Intermission, but it promises to be long(ish)!

* * *

**Chapter Fourteen: And a bottle of Rum  
**Even now, they didn't seem to understand just how serious humanity could be about hunting aliens. Like witches ... only from outer space.  
-+-

The universe was infinite and strange in its entirety ... a dusted and ever-stretching maze of new and unexplored regions and new phenomena and new planets and new life. Sideswipe had been to what seemed like every stretch of quite a few galaxies, and he had seen a great many planets with impossibly diverse life in great amounts. Going down onto such places, however, was mostly unnecessary. If there was one thing that he could agree with the Decepticons about, it was that foreign (and typically biological) life was troublesome.

That and planets were unstable for the most part ... the ones with life more developed than single-celled organisms were few and far between. Mostly they were huge hunks of violent forces, sometimes with rather unpleasant conglomerations of elements, and sometimes those elements didn't agree very well with Cybertronian alloy ... and sometimes it got in vicious fights with that alloy and won. So, mostly the Decepticons set themselves up on particularly large asteroids and dead moons because of the stable-to-null atmospheric activity, and where a mech could find the Decepticons, Sideswipe and Sunstreaker were never far behind.

So imagine their surprise to have learned that the Decepticons were hanging out on Earth, of all planets ... Earth was a whirling mass of insanity. Stability was a foreign concept to every last atomically unstable element, inherent down to the last electron of every molecule of every compound. And the humans exploited that instability, and gloried in it instead of feared it, and where the weather threatened their lives, they lived anyway. They were insane little meat creatures, and -- ...

... and Sideswipe was starting to understand what he'd been _missing_ all of these vorns.

The metal shell of the vessel they'd taken lurched wildly under his feet, and the smooth and harmless form of them scraped uselessly over the dead metal. He'd reconfigured the shape to prevent organic matter from building up in the delicate gears that he needed in the best of repair incase they ran into Decepticons, but they did nothing to stop him from sliding dangerously across the vessel. Electrical currents superheated the air overhead and created a crackling roar as a wave of saline swept over the edge of the vessel and hissed as steam from his shell. Even cycling air as furiously as he was in trying to keep the moisture from being sucked too far down his vents wasn't enough to cool his frame. He was burning hot and the saline dried on his form and was washed away with more saline, and that dried too, and -- it was lucky that saline itself wasn't all that bad. It caused severe irritation to the alloy, absorbing processor space and distracting the repair systems to areas that weren't actually _damaged_, and normally that got on Sideswipe's last MN protocol, but ...

His processor was punch-drunk, as the humans would put it in the English variation. He was burning hot with repair nanites, and he was processing nearly at the same speed as during a battle, but there was nothing to fight out here but the storm.

The ocean gave a particularly violent heave, sending ridiculous amounts of the dihydrogen-monoxide splashing wildly over the edge of the vessel and sweeping Sideswipe up into it. It nearly was enough to make him tumbled over the pathetically short railing and into the dark and violent reaches of the deep but --

The grip on his tire was sudden and stern, an unforgiving tightness that was almost painful, and he was tugged back from the edge and both feet were under him again. He didn't need to scan backwards to know what was there, but he did anyway ... Sunstreaker loomed like a solar irradiated monument to a sheer lack of adventure, not that Sideswipe _really_ wanted to see what was at the bottom of the ocean ... but his presence meant that --

Beyond him, clutching the structure of the humans' guiding hatch for the ship, was the little Chase class model. He looked vaguely like he'd consumed too much fuel, and come to think of it, he'd been acting a bit like that, too ... even a newly activated mech who often needed a little fuel could consume too much. Which was a bad idea whether you were new or reformatted or what, because it would gum up the filters and effectively poison his processor and he'd probably end up having to perform an emergency evacuation so that his filters could be repaired by the nanites. It happened to _any_ mech who consumed foreign energy, but ... surely there hadn't been any time for such a thing to happen --

Well, that wasn't true. For a while, he'd been taken hostage by the squishies, and Sideswipe supposed it was possible that they had put fuel in him, not knowing any better --

The liquid ocean gave another churning toss, and Boxy swooned. Even from this distance, Sideswipe could discern the sound of his intake flicking open and the pumps churning in reverse -- and shortly, the clear colored fluid the flesh creatures burnt to power their vehicles splashed all over the deck, immediately washed away by a particularly fortunate wave. Sideswipe clicked a few times in sympathy, having tried processing too much energon before to stay awake before a suspected fight. He'd been forced to evacuate his tank, too, and hadn't touched the stimulant since.

The twitching blue mech was clearly weakened by the poisoning, and no doubt distracted by the self repair systems that were probably initializing -- and the next pitch of the vessel as it rode the violent tossing of the saline sea gripped the slight form and sent him sliding toward the ledge. Even his small frame would easily overcome the railing meant for five-to-six foot biologicals, and they were forced to interfere. Sideswipe and his counterpart moved as one to grab him -- one by the curve of armor arcing over his shoulder gear, the other griping the betraying structures on his back, and they pulled him back easily before he went overboard and sunk helplessly into the depths. Sure, being immersed in saline wouldn't _kill_ a mech, but the information that Sideswipe had collected on the planet when they'd first landed told him that it wouldn't do anything _kind_ to a mech down there. Not really a death trap, but it would be like the Pit.

"(Have _got_ to talk to him about this,)" Sideswipe said conversationally. The weak, wavering EA field slid unpleasantly over his alloy, but he'd felt worse things and didn't mind it much as he helped Sunstreaker move the malfunctioning mech off deck. They helpfully strapped him down, using things that the flesh sentients probably used on the cargo that such a ship was intended to carry, rocking with the pitch of the furious ocean.

"(He should be able to do it on his own,)" Sunstreaker sent back with that same subsonic unpleasantness he always used.

"(Reformatted,)" he reminded his counterpart. "(And glitched to a terabyte and a half.)" After a moment longer of listening to the unpleasant noises coming from the blue chasebot, he bent back down and grasped the mech's head, tilting it back and to the side so that he could get a good look at the lines bared by the unnatural angle. His coolant pump was acting funny judging by how that line kept twitching, and the gears slid a little _too_ easily ... lubricant was being leaked a little faster than it should be. Boxy would be looking forward to some _strange_ things happening when he finally sunk into recharge ... which promised to be soon. His communication receptors were swiveling in uncoordinated and jerky patterns, and his optics kept flickering ... visuals scrambled and he was probably getting plenty of strange radio feed.

"(He'll be okay,)" he decided, letting go so that Boxy's gears would fall back into the most natural position for him. For a moment longer, he studied the configuration of the mech sprawled into such an unnatural position. His basic structural setup implied he was protecting a lot more hardware under his armor than a mech like the two of them, and the ridiculously expansive set of receptors he sported (never mind their impossible sensitivity) meant he'd probably be able to support a group communication session unlike the Autobots had ever been able to engage in before. By Primus -- forget that for a moment. The shortwave _range_ he'd probably be able to get ... His primary receptors were congruent with the receptors that Optimus Prime had welded on.

Of course, he'd never get Optimus' range, simply because the Prime was one of the tallest mechs they had on their side, and he _flatly_ had the longest receptors that could be built, but ... on scale, Boxy'd give him a run for his money.

They'd have heard of Boxy before _now_, if he were an Autobot. It was all perfectly logical to his processor that Boxy would have these mods if he were a neutral, though. Neutrals were so wide and thinly spread that a mech could travel the universe for vorns and never see one, and that meant they had to be self sufficient and be able to find each other when necessary. Boxy had undeniably been a neutral, but maybe ... since he'd been reformatted ...

The vessel gave a particularly violent heave, and Sideswipe nearly tumbled into his counterpart but for the fact that Sunstreaker (as always) foresaw such things and had long since braced his feet, easily offering an anchor. As the vessel stabilized again, he rose to his full height where he could handle the wild movements of the saline liquid and looked to his counterpart.

"(Think we could get him to join the Autobots?)" he asked.

Sunstreaker didn't look all enthused with such an idea. "(He's seen the other Autobots, _after_ he got reformatted. Ratchet _firewalled_ him, Sideswipe.)"

"(Yeah, but when they got Bumblebee away from those slaggin' Decepticons, they stamped him as soon as he said 'sir'. Boxy's as unmarked as any neut.)"

His counterpart regarded him suspiciously. "(Are you trying some 'finder's keepers' thing on this glitch?)" he demanded.

Sideswipe took a surprised moment to assess himself. "(I don't think so,)" he said slowly, as the results came back as inconclusive. It was true that he and Sunstreaker had always felt something like The Pull that kept them together, but ... ever since ... _then_, Sideswipe had been more prone to The Pull than even most mechs that acknowledged such a thing. And right now, Sideswipe was feeling The Pull, and it was telling him that the quicker and more surely they could keep Boxy from the Decepticons, the better.

Of course it was terrible when the Decepticons got a hold of _any mech_, and especially an imprinting mech -- especially one with blue optics. Cybertronian history files gave Sunstreaker and Sideswipe the information of the home world they had never lived on, that they were a separate people ... that the Decepticon and Autobots had once been an anion field apart before they'd met each other and their opposing coding made a war that had extended so far into the universe that their separate names were forgotten in the name of the all encompassing battlefield. So there were Autobots with red optics and Decepticons with blue, but it always seemed _wrong_.

So it was natural to want to keep Boxy out of Decepticon claws, but ... it was also different. Sideswipe sensed in the deep part of him that was receptive to The Pull that it would be _unforgivable_. Boxy _had_ to get to Autobot hands, preferably _Prime's_ hands, or else the war would be over ... and not in a good way.

"(Has this got to do with _that_, again?)" Sunstreaker growled unhappily.

"(Oh, I know it's why we got crashed here to begin with,)" he said breezily, rocking with the pitch of the vessel. Sunstreaker hated The Pull. Sideswipe didn't know if he had ever felt it, but if he had, he'd denied it. "(But it seemed important, that we had to get here.)"

"(You're glitched worse than _Frenzy_,)" he said dismally.

Sideswipe chirped in insult. "(I am _not_,)" he protested, a little riled. Being compared to _that_ pathetic scrap heap ... ergh.

"(You can't keep him,)" Sunstreaker said firmly, gesturing at the silent chasebot. "(I don't care _what_ is bouncing around in your circuits.)"

"(I don't want to keep him,)" he protested. He had his counterpart, and that was good enough for his attachment circuits, no matter how complex they were. What was going on in Sunstreaker's processor? He shot his counterpart a wary scan. "(Why? Do _you_?)"

The possibility was sudden and startling, and that perfectly _wretched_ thing inside his processor churned out the probabilities and logic, and said that the chances weren't good but his attachment circuits never had been good at listening. His gears worked just a little too fast, pumps shifting fluid into lines faster than it was meant to fill, causing a minor warning to pop up. Ever since -- _then_, he knew it had been different. But he'd thought it was okay, he thought that Sunstreaker was still his counterpart, he thought --

"(No,)" Sunstreaker snapped, sounding offended. "(Unlike you -- I still operate more like we used to.)"

An uncomfortable reminder, increasing the pressure in his lines so that all throughout his body, they shifted a little. Software jittered a little, his whole careful balancing act teetered sideways and the dark things that troubled his recharge swam up like oil rising above the unsteady ground beneath his feet. "(Hush, he'll hear you,)" he bid his counterpart, scanning the only other mech within miles and miles. "(You're so noisy, 'Streaker ... why are you so noisy?)"

Sunstreaker centered his visual field toward the door, and after a few breems, Sideswipe regained his elquilibrium, assured that there were no Decepticons anywhere near them. It took longer than he cared, for the oil to soak back into the ground and grow steady beneath his feet again, for him to remember that they were on the pitching shifting vessel on the saline ocean of Earth, with a reformatting chasebot on one hand and the Autobot and Decepticon war close on the other. But it finally resolved itself ... he finally remembered. And he just stood there for a moment, scanning his counterpart who had centered his visuals on the door and didn't look keen to adjust them any time soon.

"I'm going to go fight the storm," he said finally, just to hear the mimicry of human voice under the roar of wind and the saline and the snap-crackle of thunder.

"(You can't fight what you can't touch,)" Sunstreaker said, still not allowing Sideswipe to be in his visual field.

"That's the difference between you and me," he said, thrusting every spare bit of his processor toward the deck of the ship. "You don't know how to fight the shadows, Sunstreaker -- you just cause them."

The dismal murmur might have been his counterpart -- but it was most likely the hidden things in his processor that always confused the situation and made him pick up on things that _were not there_, and Sideswipe went to face the wild forces of Earth's elements ... just to find some peace. Synchronization would come later, when it wouldn't make him feel like burning a hole through his laser core with a plasma blast to the chest.

-+-

It was becoming increasingly obvious to Sam that giant space robots had some strange things in common with Earth. Like cats. And Pirates. Mostly Jack Sparrow. (Shut up, Sam _liked_ the original Pirates of the Caribbean, okay? And not because he used to pretend he was the Will to Mikaela's Elizabeth. _Shut up, it wasn't_. )

Anyway, Sideswipe had indeed determined how they were going to get from England to _New_ England ... mostly, by boat. Just like Sam had figured out for his own, thank you very much. Therefore, shortly after having crashed the police car into a gully, the three of them had gone off to a shipyard that Sideswipe's source of information said would be where they would find appropriate ships. Sam was impressed when this proved to be true, since he already knew that the Internet was full of lies and more lies. Of course, hiding the three of them on a ship for _six weeks_ would be impossible with humans aboard, so the two of them had decided they needed to cause some kind of distraction.

This was mostly achieved with 'big boom', much as Sam had suspicion. And yes, he'd had hysterics every which direction, threatening to tattle to Prime on them when they next saw the Autobot leader, just to get them to behave and _not_ hurt anymore humans. Luckily, this was something of a success, at least a little. It seemed that Sunstreaker and Sideswipe felt that they were much too awesome to have to bow to Prime's rules. However, if there was one thing that Sam had learned from his mother, it was how to nag like there was no tomorrow, and eventually got them to comply to the 'No Hurting Humans' act of '07.

This did not stop the explosions, nor did it stop the incredible amount of 'ooh'ing and 'aaw'ing the two did after the fact, but at least it was something. Sam was just dreading the moment when the two Lamborghini jerks discovered that humans liked to celebrate the fourth of July with fireworks ... which were essentially small bombs with shiny explosions. He really, really dreaded the chance that Sideswipe and Sunstreaker might take it upon themselves to show the humans how to _really_ make an explosion.

In either case, Sunstreaker and Sideswipe had 'commandeered' a cargo ship. Unfortunately, while it was large enough to accommodate three giant robots, it wasn't big enough to accommodate _restless_ robots. It took Sam all of two seconds to walk from the front of the ship to the back, and not even one to move from one side to the other. He knew this very well because once the storm from the first day had passed and he'd been awake, he'd done it several times. So had Sunstreaker and Sideswipe.

Which reminded him -- Sam's very first experience with intoxicants was as a giant robot. What the hell? He didn't even know it was _possible_ for robots to be ... drunk, or whatever it was, but damned if he hadn't been something like it when the two jerks had been hijacking the ship. He didn't know it was possible to actually _throw up_, either, but the pitching ship had made him nauseous like nothing else. Since he couldn't recharge, he'd come above deck and ... eventually ... thrown up. At least, he was pretty sure that was exactly what he'd done. (And then he'd passed out into a confusing twenty hours filled with strange hallucinations of bright colors and silver sparkling mists, and skies filled with warping changing colors). When he'd finally come out of it, his processor had then been preoccupied with repairing the damage done to his inner components.

"Explain to me,_ why_, again, do they call it a 'breem'?" Sam said for what felt like the millionth time. Getting a straight answer (or any answer) out of the two jerks was like taking candy from a five year old -- _impossible_.

"(What does it matter?)" Sideswipe asked, exasperated. "(Just remember that the smallest is an astrond, then a breem, then an orn -- and on and always. Now use your _radio_.)"

"I'm not even going to _try_ until you explain to me _why_ when your language sounds like a bunch of homicidal copier machines do you have something that actually sounds like a _real word_?"

It was something that had been bothering him ever since he made the mistake of actually calling miniseconds that in front of the Lamborghinis. After gratuitous sneering on Sunstreaker's part and mockery on Sideswipe's, they condescended to telling Sam just what their measurements of time were called and helpfully actually explained what the Earth equivalent was. Sam had then painstakingly created a side-along program that provided him with the Earth equivalents for his chronometer.

"I mean, come on --" he continued, merrily watching Sideswipe wind himself up into a real fit of frustration, "if you can translate your curse words into English, you've _got_ to be able to translate those words."

"_Can't_," Sideswipe wailed, gripping the side of his helmet, "I told you, they're -- _Sunstreaker_, make him _shut up_?"

After a brief pause, the yellow mech looked away from the distant horizon and flickered his optics at Sideswipe. "Sorry," he said insincerely, "did you say something? This audio filter pretty much eradicates both of your vocal frequencies."

With a squeal like a door hinge, Sideswipe stared at the other in insult. "You made an _audio filter_ that blocked out our vocals?"

"_You're_ the one that wanted him to talk," Sunstreaker said unsympathetically. He was a huge jerk anyway, but a few days on a ship in the ocean had only amped up his total lack of interpersonal skills. Sam was actually kind of impressed.

"I wanted him to learn to use comline communication -- not _lose any ability to shut up_!"

"Yeah," Sam said idly, "only trying to talk and shut up at the same time isn't the easiest thing to do, so I keep skipping between local and shortband, and apparently it's really getting on Sides' nerves, _but_ maybe you can tell me why the hell you can translate clicks into 'slag', but you have -- _words_ for things like 'astronds' and 'breems'."

Sunstreaker stared at him for a moment, rumbled, and turned back to glower at the distant darkness.

"I _told_ you," Sideswipe grumbled, "_we_ don't know. It was probably determined to be irrelevant history, and the file was deleted from the cultural download when they made us! You'll have to ask one of the older models -- probably Ironhide. He's ancient!"

Sam tried for a moment to relate the words 'ancient' and 'Ironhide' together and couldn't quite make it. Maybe it was because Ironhide didn't _act_ like he was old by human standards ...? "Oh, fine, then," Sam grumbled, giving in. "I'll _try_ the comline."

They'd all been on edge, being stuck on the small ship and out on the pitching water, but Sideswipe seemed set on working Sam to death, or something like it. The moment Sideswipe had successfully communicated with him over the radio, back when they were on sane land, he figured out that Ratchet had built in a sort of failsafe in Sam's firewalls and was hell bent on breaking every last firewall inside Sam's processor. Apparently, when Sam had figured out that the two must have been listening in on the police radios, that had been ... well, it'd done _something_ inside his circuits that broke whatever it was that had been blocking them before.

According to those two, they _had_ tried to communicate with him when they figured out he was Cybertronian, but had been unable to establish any sort of connection. Which implied that they could get in touch with other Cybertronians _without_ their communication frequencies, _but_, Sideswipe explained, that would just be sending out a general 'I'm here' message and could bring Decepticons as easily as Autobots.

"If anything," Sunstreaker drawled, "I would have thought you'd be teaching him how to _ping_."

Sideswipe stared at Sunstreaker, completely pole axed judging by the way the quiet whirl of his fans just cut off suddenly. Then they finally started up again and he whipped around to scan Sam. "Now why didn't _I_ think about that?" he demanded.

"Because most bots are onlined with that sort of information?" Sunstreaker said, actually sounding a little charitable. Then in a move that startled both Sideswipe and Sam, he reached out and patted the red mech's tire before turning back to scan the distance, like he always did when they were above board and in danger of being discovered.

"Er," Sideswipe said, scanning his companion warily before he turned back to Sam, "alright, so ... I guess you don't know how to ping, either?"

"Probably not," Sam said cautiously. "What's a ping?"

"This is a ping," Sideswipe explained.

Then something wild shifted inside of Sam's head, and the vague knowledge he had of the other two bots shifted as additional information popped up, clipped to Sideswipe. It was actually a lot like someone coming online on an instant messenger, only different -- it came up with: _Autobot Sideswipe, Third grade Commando. _

"What the hell?" Sam muttered, turning this information side to side and upside down, figuratively speaking. "And how do you do it? No -- wait, _why didn't you do it before_? When I didn't know who the hell was chasing me!"

"Your comline was jammed," Sunstreaker said, "what makes you think that your subcom was any better?"

Sam had to admit that made at least a little sense. "... but how do you do it, then?"

"Well ... that's the hard part," Sideswipe admitted. "It's pretty vital, but everyone always knows how to do it. It's how you avoid shooting friendlies."

Sam stared. "What do you mean, avoid shooting friendlies?"

Sideswipe wasn't amused. "Well, you didn't always look like _this_, did you?" he demanded, reaching out to knock on Sam's headlight -- which was rude. It also brought to light the fact that Sam's headlights had _sensors_. What the _fuck_? Why in the hell would his headlights have sensors! His 'eyes' were his windows, in car form! He twitched and drew away from the larger mech, automatically covering the headlight with one protective claw.

But come to think of it, _of course_ he hadn't. When he'd first woken up, he'd been all kinds of mottled colors -- dark gray and silver and chrome and gold and copper. And hell, from one transformation to the next, his form was changing in small but noticeable ways. And so, now that he thought about it, it made perfect sense that no one would be able to recognize anyone else, immediately. "Well, no," he answered finally, "but that still doesn't help explain what the hell I'm supposed to do to make that 'ping' thing happen. How do I make it work?"

Sideswipe's tires spun idly, which Sam assumed was his equivalent of a shrug. "Search me."

Which was initially frustrating, because Sideswipe had an idea for everything else -- but then the literal meaning of the words made Sam pause. _Search_ Sideswipe? Would that work? He didn't really understand anything about his body, but he knew that a lot of things happened simply because _somewhere_, a program was translating what he was telling his (nonexistent) human body into something that was meaningful to his Cybertronian body. All that wincing he'd done while on the run from the jerks, and before that, when he'd been learning to drive and figuring out how to make his headlights stay on at night and his windshield wipers going during the rain storms ...

To be completely honest, Sam had stupidly got out of the habit of _learning_ about himself. Once he'd gotten the hang of driving, he'd pretty much sunk into a funk and just drove around when he should have been trying to think of a way to contact the Autobots. He'd simply decided it was impossible and _hadn't_. Then again, not being able to move was a huge motivator to learn, and not being in contact with the Autobots was distressing, but not all that terrible. Not like being paralyzed, or having that nagging in his processor to find an alt form.

Alright. So. Pinging someone was basically like changing his status on a giant instant messaging application, right? Besides, he hadn't even noticed his peripheral knowledge of the jerks until Sideswipe had pinged him, so ... "This could be a while," he told his restless companions.

"Then can we do it _below deck_?" Sunstreaker complained, shifting restlessly.

"Sure, sure," Sam agreed absently, "this is all internal anyway ... it might take me forever to find the right thought that locates the program I need ..."

Sideswipe turned back to his companion, making a plaintive humming noise. "Com'n, 'Streaker ... it's be _so_ much quicker if you just let me hack the firewalls --"

"No," Sunstreaker said with an unrelenting growl.

"_No_," Sam agreed, sounding less unrelenting and more hysteric. "You keep the hell away from my brain!"

"Glitched," the yellow mech said, gesturing. "See, look? Glitched to the Pit and back."

"Hey!"

"He also probably spent a good while thinking he was a _car_," Sideswipe argued, "that's bound to glitch anyone up -- doesn't mean he's _dangerous_."

"_Hey_, now wait a moment --"

"And what do you suppose happened that made the Decepticons drop him _here_, if his allies are way the frag over _there_?"

"Search me," Sideswipe repeated, "the Decepticons are all glitched."

"I'm going below deck," Sam announced, getting up and leaving the two to their argument. The two of them sure acted _odd_ sometimes. It was pretty obviously that they were gobbling up all the information they'd downloaded when they'd first arrived, and must have raided the internet before they left dry land behind, but still ... the _others_ never acted so weird, and _they'd_ obviously used the internet excessively. _Bumblebee_, at least, certainly had, since he just _got_ too many of Miles' remarks that even Sam sometimes got lost on. So why were these two, who couldn't even speak English five days ago, acting _so strangely_?

"Maybe _they're_ glitched ...?" Sam mused to himself, before he got to work. Learning to communicate with radio waves promised to give him the largest case of processor ache _ever_.

-+-

Looking after imprinting mechs wasn't the easiest thing in the universe. A mech couldn't _really_ begin compiling a file on an imprinter, because something (anything, really) might change previously stable behaviors, and ... getting a straight answer out of Boxy about _how long_ he'd been imprinting was nearly impossible. He and Sunstreaker agreed, though, that the chances were that he hadn't gotten his memory _completely_ wiped, and that he'd spent a long time not knowing he was any different from the rest of Earth's technology. It was _just_ similar enough that if a mech already disoriented by having his memory slagged and his higher processors disable _might_ mistake them for the Cybertronian homeland ...

Not that he or his counterpart or a dozen other mechs had ever seen Cybertron or walked on the surface. But if Boxy had been made long enough ago, walking on Cybertron's surface with all of the networks and signals could be a ghost in his codes, and if Earth had made that ghost sing while he recovered from the damaged he'd suffered ... of course, it couldn't be too much of a ghost, could it? Boxy acted more like their noncombatants than most imprinters.

Ergh, it was enough to tie his wires in knots. He was just glad that this was probably the only imprinting mech he'd ever have to look after. They'd been there when Bumblebee had been brought in, of course, but he'd already done nearly all of his most basic imprinting already and just had the last stretch to go. Bumblebee had been _stable_, in other words ... and Boxy just wasn't. Probably because it was clear he'd done all of his basic imprinting on Earth technology and humans, because he simply carried too many of their habits to explain it any other way.

But when Sideswipe searched the entire ship without finding him, the last place he could possibly be was above deck, and that was exactly where Sideswipe found him. They'd been out to sea for nearly ten planetary rotations, and besides driving everyone bugged (and Boxy as a Chase class mech most of all), Sideswipe _had_ managed to teach him a least a little about what he was doing. Boxy was getting better about the radio, and at least his familiarity with the Earth style radio signals came in handy ... it was hard for Sideswipe and his counterpart to filter through it all to find the particular 'shout' they wanted, but Boxy did it as easily as flipping a scanner. (Or not. Boxy had difficulty changing his visual filters and even more trouble adjusting his nonoptical sensors.)

"What the slag are you doing up here?" he asked, spotting the blue and white mech crouched by the side of the ship, optics fixed on the water.

His receptors gave a startled twitch, and he turned to verify visually. That was the thing with Boxy -- he liked to _see_ things, like he couldn't trust his scanners. "Just -- oh, you know, enjoying the night," he said, waving his delicate claws out at the horizon at large.

Sideswipe scanned the environment skeptically. The internet flatly stated that humans depended quite a bit on their environment, and that the wrong kind could actually negatively affect their processing center. If Boxy had imprinted _that_ of all things, Sideswipe definitely wasn't going to be on _his_ escort when they finally got off this wretched dirtball and left to search space for a new home. Don't get him wrong -- he thought space was glorious ... but the scenery didn't really change much. It and everything in it was just too big and distant for the changes to be quick enough to be interesting. "Sure," he said, turning back to the chasebot. "So, why'd you freak out when you connected to the ship's processor?"

Boxy dropped his claw to the tire on his knee, drumming them against the Elasyn while his ER transmitter murmured with discomfort. He was a bit of a spindly mech, and Sideswipe wasn't sure if he'd been bigger once, and just had most of his hardware chopped off, or if he'd been smaller and got additional hardware to extend his shape. Probably the later option -- who in the Pit really needed that many fingers? Maybe he'd once had the Spark of an engineer, and attached extras just in case one got blown off.

Thank Primus that Sideswipe was accustomed to giving moody mechs their time, being Sunstreaker's counterpart. He waited while Boxy processed, and finally he recentered his visual field on him.

"It's been three months," he said.

Sideswipe gave his own processor time to try to puzzle out what in the world Boxy could be talking about before he said: "what? It's been three months since when?"

Boxy made that same plaintive squeak he had before running off the first time. "Since the attack -- since I've see the Autobots. _Hell_, they probably think I'm dead by now -- _I_ don't have a way to contact them, _you_ two jerks don't have a way to contact them, Hell, we're not even sure they're still were they're _supposed to be_ --"

Ignoring the reoccurring commentary on his personality matrix, Sideswipe held up his claws. Boxy always responded best when he used human communication, but he reflected that he would be _so glad_ when they could meet up with everyone else and let _them_ handle being Boxy's caretaker. "Whoa, whoa, whoa ... slow down, Boxy. Relax. Even if you're ... pretty helpless, I'm sure they don't think you're dead. Even missing all the information you were, _which_, that? I'm gonna fix that -- even with that, a mech can take care of themselves. Primus designed us that way -- and why in the Pit would engineers change that?"

It didn't seem to soothe Boxy at all though. He made another distressed squeak and centered his visual field on the ocean. Sideswipe briefly wondered if he intended to throw himself overboard, but he'd learned that Boxy was terrified of the deep ocean. He wished that Boxy would get his ER transmitter oiled though, if only so he _couldn't_ squeak. ERTs were meant to suffer wear and tear, but honestly ... maybe he'd just gotten used to Sunstreaker, who obsessively turned the ERT software off.

Then again, considering Boxy having imprinted on humans ... "Anyone in particular you're worried thinks you've been offlined?" he asked.

Boxy barely twitched, but judging by the way his receptors shifted into their defensive position, Sideswipe had hit it on the spot. Great -- not only was he glitched to the Pit and back, and imprinted off humanity, Boxy had a complex attachment circuit. This probably meant that they were never going to be rid of him. Not with that and the imprinting he was probably doing on them. "('Streaker,)" he sent with resignation, "(I hope you don't mind a tagalong.)"

"( ... I thought you weren't going to 'finder's keepers' the little glitch,)" he grumbled back.

"(I'm _not_,)" he protested. "(His circuits already fixated on someone anyway. But he _fixated_, Sunstreaker -- between that and imprinting, we're screwed.)"

"( ... are you sure I can't just slag 'im?)"

"(You know if Ratchet's got his nanites in him, that's the _last_ thing you'll want to do.)"

Sunstreaker moodily put Sideswipe on 'ignore'. It wasn't entirely unusual, and Sideswipe put it aside for now. Instead, since he knew he'd just reminded Boxy of something that was sure to make him moody as hell, and he didn't want to deal with _two_ moody mechs, he searched for something that Boxy would know about that he could distract him with. Actually -- now that he thought about it --

"That reminds me," he said brightly, taking two steps toward the chasebot and then having to scramble back to the center of the boat when it began to lurch sideways. Boxy reacted with natural speed, spinning around and clawing for the center of the boat, crouching there for a moment with limbs in all directions like an araktric. Once the boat righted itself and seemed to steady, he looked up and shifted his face -- a quick reference told Sideswipe that he was glaring as best as he could without a human face.

"What is _wrong with you_?" Boxy demanded, his already mid-high communication frequency going a little higher. "Are you _trying_ to sink us?!"

"No," Sideswipe said, "I'm pretty sure if I was trying to sink us, we'd be sunk."

Boxy wasn't amused, if the humming was anything to go by.

"Be quiet for a moment," he said, pitching his own engine to emit relaxed tones. "I wanted to ask you about something."

The sound did its job, because his receptors finally fell out of alignment. "What?" he asked cautiously. "I told you, I don't know how long --"

"No, no, not that," Sideswipe said, waving it off. "I actually wanted to ask you about the All Spark."

Boxy froze like he'd just spotted one of Ironhide's cannons aimed directly at his laser core. Then his optics flickered, but Sideswipe couldn't say if it wasn't just a power surge and not a visual field being switched. "What about it?" he asked slowly.

"Well, you said it'd been destroyed."

Not that Sideswipe believed that. Everyone knew that without the All Spark, they'd all die nearly immediately. Everyone would simply cease function. Wheeljack proposed that it was the All Spark, after all, that anchored the strange energy that their Sparks were composed of to the familiar world, and that once the source was destroyed, then everything would also be destroyed. No one really understood how or why that was supposed to work, but Wheeljack said that was how it would and so chances were, that was how it would go.

Of course, Sideswipe and his counterpart were reluctant to place any sort of importance on anything Wheeljack said, but since he'd actually managed to create a _force field_, well ... so there really wasn't any reason why he should believe that the All Spark was destroyed, but it was a bit _weird_ that this mech thought it was.

Boxy hesitated, then shifted until he was sitting, awkwardly. "Well ... yeah. I mean, it was kind of used to kill Megatron. You know ... they like, put it in his chest."

Sideswipe's processor refused the information a total of seven times. "_What_?" he demanded.

"Well, it'd been here all along," Boxy said, "and Megatron kind of found it, but he got ... turned into a giant Megacicle. So he couldn't get it. And the humans found it and they found him, and they kind of ... moved Megatron in with the Cube -- I guess cos they're the same technology, so they could study them at the same time ... and everything on earth pretty much was reverse engineered from Megatron. So then, finally the Autobots figured out it was here, but so had the Decepticons, and ... it turns out that they had to use these glasses to find the Cube, so this guy was dragged into the entire thing -- anyway, long story short, Optimus Prime told the guy to put the Cube in his chest to destroy it, if he couldn't defeat Megatron. Only it made a lot more sense to kill the bad guy, you know, so ... into Megatron's chest the Cube went. The only thing left was a shard."

It was hard to try to simulate the entire story, and it would short out his circuits if he kept trying -- the circumstances that must have created the entire situation were inconceivable -- so Sideswipe focused on what he _could_ accept as truth. Megatron had located the All Spark, which had landed on this planet ... that Boxy had also landed on. Crashed on. Whatever. "And where," he asked nonchalantly, "do you enter this equation?"

"I dunno," Boxy said, "the beginning? Can't say ... my memory's fried, like I said. I only remember things clearly like ... a month after that."

Sideswipe hummed thoughtfully, scanning the chasebot again. Everyone knew that it was easy to lose one another in the stretches of space. Sometimes, companions would get separated, and the next time a mech saw them, they had become neutral, or switched sides completely ... but he had to wonder ... what were the chances of this bot (who had been modified until he couldn't even pinpoint the design era and to such extremes that when he fell into recharge, he _disappeared_ from a mech's scanners, that had to have such unbelievable radio range) could have possibly landed on the same planet as the All Spark _out of chance_?

It made a sort of logic that the Autobots and the Decepticons would not be the _only ones_ who thought to look for the All Spark ... but what faction would Boxy have been working for, and what had they wanted with it?

Though the real question was: just how much of who he used to be did Boxy remember ... and how badly did he want to recover that mech?

"And what happened to the shard?" Sideswipe asked.

"Prime kept it," Boxy answered promptly, no referencing necessary.

It would be safe enough with Optimus Prime. Of the many things that Prime was, trusting wasn't one of them. Specially not of chasebots. They were just too independent -- it came from having enough processors to avoid crashing at the speeds they moved. Even under Elita-One, they weren't a cohesive group.

Of course, neither were he and his counterpart, but that had less to do with hardware and more to do with that thing that made them utterly unique across the entire spectrum of Cybertronian life -- that thing that nearly had them killed, if the War hadn't started.

" ... think I gotta recharge again," Boxy murmured.

Reflexively, Sideswipe consulted his records. It _had_ been nearly an entire planetary rotation ... Matched against his own records, he figured that the chasebot needed nearly twice the amount of recharge that the two of them had needed, back on that moon where Ironhide found them. Then again, Boxy was running nearly half again the amount of programs and hardware. It shouldn't be surprising. "Let's get below deck, then," he offered, reaching out to pluck the bot to his feet.

"I can stand on my own, you know," he said dryly. "I'm tired, not an invalid."

"I know that," Sideswipe said. He didn't bother saying that it was because he was feeling frustratingly helpless to try to guide the imprinting process like his software told him too, and that Boxy had reverted back to generating the LW that Sideswipe had only heard the barest mention of. Imagine their surprise when Boxy had finally got around to relaxing enough that his armor depolarized! Sunstreaker and Sideswipe hadn't known such a frequency _existed_. It was nice.

And then in a fit of punch-drunk stupidity, Sideswipe had relaxed his own nanites, and they found out that _Sideswipe_ could do it, too. It wasn't easy, though ... it was like teaching his body to fire the mod cannon welded to his side. It took tons of practice and it helped if Sunstreaker or someone manually fired it recently. It was like Sideswipe had to remind himself what it felt like before he could generate anything other than the tense and irregular frequency so common to their people.

Sunstreaker, on the other hand, just couldn't. It didn't matter what Sideswipe tried to do to help his counterpart, Sunstreaker was just incapable of generating anything but the same short frequency that disrupted so entirely Sideswipe's own.

As Boxy settled into recharge in the corner that he'd claimed as his own, shaped in the defensively benign car form, Sideswipe politely locked all such speculations away. It wouldn't do any good to be anywhere near his counterpart and thinking things like that. So while Boxy was effectively eliminated off his sensors, Sideswipe retreated to his own side of the cargo room and reverted back to his own far less friendly shape and settled in. And to be perfectly honest, Sideswipe had more than enough time to determine just how much slag he and his counterpart had gotten into.

-+-

Months were a horrifically long time to be missing, Sam thought. His records were time-stamped, even if he didn't really _understand_ the timestamps too well, and once he'd gotten the date from the ship's computer ... it hadn't taken long at all for him to figure out just exactly how long he'd laid in the water off England, slowly becoming a robot. He hadn't gotten that far in his talks with Ratchet of what was to come ... maybe because Ratchet himself didn't know, maybe because becoming a larger robot took longer and he hadn't know _what_ he was going to become when the time came. There had been a count down, a warning of _how soon_ he'd go comatose and -- and metamorphosis into a mechanical monster, but not once had he even stopped to think about how _long_ it would take for something of his elemental composition to be changed into completely (literally) alien alloy.

Two months, apparently, and then the time wasted in England, moping around and hibernating ... _Two months_. Then the month wasted, and working on another month, lost at sea with the double jerks. And they were still in the first leg of their Atlantic journey. Sam knew how much could change in _two days_ ... and he was frightened of what it might mean that it had been _three months_, and he didn't know if they'd left him in the ocean because it was dangerous to move him in the middle of changing, or if they'd never known he was there to begin with, and _if they didn't know_ to begin with, then Bumblebee --

He kept trying really hard not to think about it, and was proving to be a failure as far as that was concerned.

So maybe it made sense that Sam wasn't exactly in the mood to learn anything once those kinds of thoughts settled in. And they did settle in -- they settled in and his massive processors committed them to memory and they cycled and circled and landed and took off and circled some more, and it happened _so much faster_ than it had when he was a human and there were secret processes in his head saying it was _this likely_ that such a thought was truth.

_-Autobot Sideswipe, Third grade Commando.-_

Sam felt something twitch along his back at the sudden ping, and he reluctantly rustled up the effort to attempt a ping back.

"No good," Sideswipe said, coming to a stop before the ship could react to the weight shift. "Still gibberish."

The plates shifted again, and Sam irritably clenched his claws into fists. He'd noticed over the last few transformations that the armor on his back had been getting a little loose, and he wryly wondered what kind of strange alien thing was happening to him _now_. He mostly remembered that stupid ... what was it? _Gremlins_, right? Little furry creatures, get them wet and their back exploded into boils and nasty little babies popped out? Today, the plates would keep ... _moving_ and it was really starting to get on his nerves. Probably because mostly, he didn't know _what_ was going on.

And Sunstreaker and Sideswipe had proved massive failures at being any source of information at all. Every time he asked them anything, they pretty much shrugged and said, 'it was never important to know before.'

Sideswipe pinged him again, and Sam was able to ping back more quickly this time, but he seriously doubted that anything had changed with the gibberish portion. He'd finally riddled out the ... massive ... chatroom/IM type thing that Cybertronians apparently constantly lived in, and he'd even figured out how to target a mech and ping them (which hadn't been easy. Like the comline, he had to tell himself to touch the mech without moving his arm). He had not, however, figured out how to fill out the information that he sent when he 'pinged' a mech, and that meant that the 'databurst' was garbled.

It would figure that Sam would have so much trouble with just doing the equivalent of saying 'hi' in Cybertronian.

"Why can't I just use the comline?" he asked, looking back to where Sideswipe was standing. Sam had, of course, quickly learned that the rail was a safe place to be, since he wasn't quite heavy enough to make the boat lean. It kept the two jerks back, anyway. "I've finally got _that_ down, at least. Since you can talk to someone without their frequency, and I can at least do that, even if my pings don't make much sense ..."

Sideswipe was obstinately cheerful most of this time, but there were times ... like now, when it was pure alien looking at Sam. More than that: _pure alien __**soldier**_. "Because," he said, no human inflection, no noise from his chest, "if you use the comline, you'll be tempted to use words like 'no' or 'stop' or 'wait' ... and by the time you've said that, _it's too late_. You talk too much, Boxy ... you're too noisy."

For a split second, strange things shifted inside Sam's head, and it wasn't until those things informed him he was _fucked_ did he realize that it must be some kind of battle program. Sideswipe was two feet and nearly a ton heavier than Sam, and though he hadn't seen the two fight before ... even so, things across his processor agreed that if Sideswipe so chose, Sam would be an oily flaming _wreck_ and it wouldn't matter if it'd been three months ever again.

And it was because of _what_ Sideswipe said and _how_ he said it that made Sam fight every last screaming instinct and listen to the hysterical codes in his strange body, and he didn't try to talk his way out of it. He just crouched there, looking at Sideswipe, as still as he could possibly be and thinking desperately: _I'm not here. I'm not here, I'm not interesting to you, go on ... go on ... _

In the next instant, Sideswipe's optics flared and dimed, and he broke the inhuman stillness and some strange murmur came out of his chest. "So," he said, and it seemed sudden and awkward and abrupt, "that's why you gotta learn a ping. The subprocessors get it before the superprocessors, and unless you're one bugged fragger, you're not going to shoot an ally."

"Yeah," Sam said slowly, going along with this 'nothing wrong here' act, "but I don't have a designation, or an affiliation, or a rank." Or so Sideswipe said, which is when Sam realized he was lucky that 'Sam Witwicky' hadn't popped up as his designation. It never even occurred to him, and he didn't know what it meant about him that he _forgot his name was Sam_.

(Or he forgot that Sideswipe and Sunstreaker weren't the other Autobots ... they didn't know he was _supposed_ to be Sam.)

"Well, you haven't configured your software, either," Sideswipe said easily, brushing off his earlier psychotic episode. "It should fill itself out, with our Cybertronian word for someone like you -- like 'kid'. And I think your affiliation is Autobot, Boxy, since you've been hanging with us for so long. Sorry."

"Why sorry?" Sam asked.

Sideswipe cocked his head, cool blue optics staring at Sam. "Because there's nothing a Decepticon hates more, so it doesn't matter that you're not clearly marked. The moment you ping one registering as an Autobot ally, they'll try to kill you."

Well, it wasn't anything Sam wasn't used to, back when he was human. Back when he was Samuel Witwicky with the glasses and then with the All Spark and ... "I don't know if that would be any different if I was 'neutral'," he said. The idea of anyone being neutral to war blew his mind -- and not just concerning the Autobots, but _all over_. How anyone could have _no opinion_ about people being killed ...

"Probably not," he agreed. He scanned Sam again, and Sam knew by the way his armor prickled just a little. It was an easy thing to ignore, if his senses weren't still on alert from the way his programs told him he was _slag_. "What're you doing up here again? Thought you didn't wanna be seen by the humans."

Which was true, Sam had told them himself. But being stuck inside the ship, which _never_ changed, and with a processor that could map ever square inch of it ... "At least the scenery changes, just a little," he said. But that wasn't really all of it. Back in the furthermost reaches of his vast memory space, there was some kind of worry that nagged at him, but he couldn't quite put a word to it. He just knew he felt better _above_ water.

"Bored?" Sideswipe inquired, suddenly _cheerful_ again. Which really meant nothing good. It seemed that the red mech was now back on familiar ground, and not only that, but ground he _liked_. "I know all about that," he assured Sam, and when Sam heard the whirl click of movement, he was forced to turn and find out _what the hell_ that crazy bot was up to _now_. "Boredom can be an easy thing to fix!"

Not in Sam's experience, but he hadn't been a giant robot before. "What are you doing?" he demanded suspiciously, watching Sideswipe walk carefully down the length of the middle of the ship. He was making that pleasant white-noise that he did when telling Sam about hunting Decepticons and talking about weapons that Ironhide designed -- Sam hadn't known that Ironhide designed _anything_, but apparently he had some skill with things that went _boom_.

"Just something I've been thinking about," Sideswipe said cheerfully. Reaching the bow, he stopped and turned back.

Sam wasn't quite sure what was going on, but he recognized an iffy situation when he felt one. The shifting spikes on either side of his helmet drew together in apprehension; Sunstreaker never did things in half measures, but Sideswipe always _over_ measured and over compensated, and -- he cast a look toward the ocean, which was starting to seem a lot less menacing and a lot more like a good escape. Surely Sam could improvise some sort of flotation form? Never mind that there wasn't a boat to scan, he could probably make up his own kind of boat thing, he just needed some way of keeping the air in and the water out -- _surely there was some way to avoid this_.

The alien warrior standing at the end of the ship gripped the railing on either side of the boat and readied his weight. With a strange twittering click that Sam was beginning to think of as a mad hatter smile, Sideswipe said, "bet you won't be bored anymore," and threw his weight against the rather calm rocking of the ship, and it plunged sideways.

"_Oh my God, what the fuck is wrong with you, you glitchspawned scrapheap?!_ No -- no, no, no _stop it. Sideswipe, I swear to God_ --"

-+-

"(... _whoa_ ... gettin' kinda dizzy ... think I'm gonna have a false purge ...)"

"(We can dry heave?)" Sam asked, surprise making him actually turn his head just a little before all of Sunstreaker's harsh remarks came back to him and made him fixate his optics on the approaching land.

"(I think that's unique to Sideswipe,)" Sunstreaker said dryly as he adjusted the angle of his tires to remain still against the pitch of the boat. "(How close are we?)"

Sam activated the specialized program, and said, "(six and a half miles out.)" It was a strange little program -- not a scanner but some kind of other software like the car-scanning thing, and ... that made it hard to activate for some reason. So, of course they'd been making him measure all sorts of distances because it was _different_ than the things he normally did with his visual feed.

"(Alright, Sideswipe -- funs over.)"

"(Fun'snot over til I _say_ it's over,)" Sideswipe said, sounding kind of drunk as he slid across the deck. Sam glanced back to watch the red Lamborghini knock up against the railing as the ship lurched dangerously toward the side, then gravity brought it back the other direction and Sideswipe hurried to follow, swerving so that he slid down and knocked into that railing. He'd been doing it for the last four hours. Sam was mildly impressed that his attention span lasted so long. Previous experience with the bot implied that his normal patience for any one activity was around seven breems, or nearly an hour.

"(How is he going to dry heave as a car?)" Sam asked in fascination.

"(Not easily.)"

Then his question was answered as the Lamborghini abruptly _exploded_, the transformation happening so suddenly and fast that it wasn't like the organized and fascinating shift that Sam was used to seeing. A loose limbed Sideswipe was swept across the deck while a loud, dry thumping sound reached Sam's audios, and Sideswipe whined pitifully. "Ooh ... that hurts ..." Sunstreaker made an irritable scratching sound as he reverted back to his bipedal form and went to attend his counterpart.

Maybe next time Sideswipe decided to play bucking bronco with the ship, he _wouldn't_ ... especially not in car mode, as he had this time. Then again, if you asked Sam, six weeks was just forty days too many in the company of the same two mechs, alone, on a ship that was far from large enough to even let _Sam_ really stretch his legs. They'd all been going slowly crazy -- or not so slowly, really, and crazy for Sunstreaker actually meant being more sociable -- and Sam didn't know if _his_ excuse was being a human stuck in a robot body, or because he couldn't really _go_ anywhere, like his codes were gibbering at him to do so.

He had figured out that codes nagging at him was the closest thing to instincts a robot could get, only it was a hell of a lot more obvious. Sometimes people didn't know _why_ they did what they did -- robots knew why, it was because of their codes, they just didn't know _what_ had triggered the codes, which was kind of like why now that he had thought about it a little longer than he normally thought about such things and --

-- and yes, six weeks was forty days too long, and he _had_ finally figured out this mess with radio and local communications.

"(Just so you know,)" he said, "(I think this is a really, really bad idea -- like, bad. Really bad idea is really, really bad. There are other ways, you have the technology --)"

"Oh, yes," Sunstreaker said, engine growling in his chest. "We'll make him talk, Streaker, it'll work, you just see. Yeah -- _and how do you get him to stop_?"

"You could block his frequency," Sideswipe said irritably, "so shut up."

Sunstreaker didn't look appeased. "If I block his frequency, you know he'll just use local com. Then _anyone_ could hear him."

"(I can shut up,)" Sam grouched, now feeling irritable himself, "(I just don't want to.)"

As if to prove the point, Sam _did_ shut up. But that was mostly because the previously mentioned _really bad plan_ was fully in effect and he was trying to keep from being thrown overboard. It was deep night again, as it always was when they ventured out above deck -- Sunstreaker and Sideswipe apparently _did_ have some sort of scrap code that still managed to make them hide, at least a little. As the ship groaned and shuddered to a halt, Sam reflected on his situation. Being on a ship that was effectively being crash landed wasn't the most fun thing that had ever happened to Sam, but considering recent events, it was very far from the worst thing. Luckily, one or the other of the two Cybertronians must have been referencing whatever downloads they made, or satellites overhead, because they landed on the most barren strip of land that Sam had ever seen be called American.

"What the hell is this?" he demanded, turning back to glower at them. It was two in the morning, or so the ship told him, and they were all on deck and supposedly ready to disembark. He'd gotten better at the whole 'wireless' thing, being able to even hack a little bit into the electronic things that made the ship. It was the ship's chronometer, after all, that had given him the date to know exactly how long he'd been reformatting in the bottom of the ocean.

"Land, precious land?" Sideswipe asked, leaning over the side of the ship to scan the sand. "Okay, sure, it's a lot softer than I'd like, but ..."

Sunstreaker didn't wait for them to finish making wary noises at the sand, simply vaulting over and sinking up to his ankle gears. He snarled at the sand like he could scare it off, and then began to slog off through it, heading for drier areas. Sideswipe made a dissatisfied noise and leapt after his counterpart, leaving Sam on board. Sam grumbled to himself for a little, but when the honest aliens didn't show any hints of slowing down, he leapt after them.

Of course, Sam wasn't nearly as nimble or coordinated as they were, and pretty much almost took a nose dive into the sand, but he managed to catch himself by the tires beside either knee joint, and his hands. He struggled up out of wet sand, and _man_, to something his size with weight that wasn't very well spread out ... yeah, it was pretty much quick sand.

"Crap, crap, crap," he muttered to himself as he struggled valiantly against the forces of nature, eventually managing to struggle out of the wet sand and into drier sand. "Just when I thought I was _done_ with sand in unusual place -- but no, life, it hates me, and so I suffer ..."

"Hurry up, Boxy!"

"Yeah, yeah," he snorted, still trying to shake what sand he could off as he stumbled through the soft land to reach them. At least he had talked them out of trying to explode the ship. They really, really liked explosions, it seemed ... but while it was scary in Sunstreaker, Sam felt more often than not that Sideswipe would be more likely to pull a Miles and squeal like a thirteen year old girl when the ship blew up. A mech felt like sometimes Sunstreaker wondered how well _they_ would blow up, to put it bluntly.

So, other than being run ashore, the ship could and would be located and either salvaged or turned back over to the English. The two swore up and down that no one would be able to tell that alien robots had hijacked it, but Sam hadn't been able to resist checking for himself, just incase his human memory would warn him of _something_. Even now, they didn't seem to understand just how serious humanity could be about hunting aliens.

Like witches ... only from outer space.

He finally located them out in the dunes, where the coastal weeds grew thick enough that it sort of made the sand firmer. Aside from mastering the radio, Sam had managed to start connecting wirelessly to things, which ... was way far from being easy to do. Apparently, it was as close to instinctual as robots could get, but for Sam, he had to build himself an operating system from scratch. Headaches abounded. And it was mostly up to Sideswipe to teach him things, because Sunstreaker liked to brood. Which he did, well and often. Sam had not known before meeting Sunstreaker that it was even possible for something that looked like a Lamborghini to brood, but he managed it, and with gusto.

"It's time to learn weapons!" Sideswipe announced cheerfully, noticing his approach.

"Weapons," Sam echoed doubtfully. It was one thing to learn to send radio messages, both by doing it 'BF' and 'SF' (A childish part of Sam snickered and wondered if there was a 'BFF' version), but blowing shit up sounded a ton more dangerous. Of course, he realized, it probably sounded that way because _it was_. _Go Sam, you're batting a thousand tonight_.

"Don't worry," Sideswipe said cheerfully, waving him forward as he started to go further out into the darkness while Sunstreaker stayed put. Only the barest of glows emanated from his various lights to mark his passage, and Sam hurried to keep up. "Since you have that weird thing about not hurting the local wildlife, I made sure we crashed somewhere without a lot of it."

Yeah _right_ -- that was pretty much a lie and he knew it. _Humans_ might be a safe distance away from Sideswipe's newest lesson, but Sam was sure there were plenty of birds and things in the weeds out here. He stumbled slightly as some of the roots tangled in his feet gears and took an annoyed few moments to try to pry it out before he had to give up. "And I'm supposed to learn weapons -- how?" he demanded acerbically, thrusting his arm out. He was vaguely aware that this was where his cannon was, but since he didn't know where _specifically_, he was at a loss on how they were going to practice.

"Like this."

Before Sam was quite sure what was going on, Sideswipe had turned and caught him by the arm he'd so conveniently thrust out there. There was a whirl and a click of his fingers as they thinned, and then before Sam could protest, he began to poke at things hiding behind his armor. "Hey -- whoa, wait, what are you -- _shit, what the fuck_ --" Something _strange_ happened inside his arm, almost like the pinch of a needle on the inside of his elbow for a shot, and sort of like being tickled, but what really alarmed Sam was the way that his arm began _shifting_, without his control.

He didn't exactly _mean_ to struggle to get away from Sideswipe, but he _did_ -- and the larger bot, who was not only taller but wider and _heavier_ than Sam, had absolutely no difficulty in keeping his grip on Sam's arm; it was like a five year old struggling against an adult man. And then it wasn't an arm anymore, and Sam stopped struggling for a moment to stare in dry horror. "What the fuck," he repeated weakly.

"This," Sideswipe said, pointing at his not-arm, "is your basic pulse cannon. Every Cybertronian in existence has a pair of these. Each bot starts at basically the same power level, but -- hmm. How to say this ... it's basically the same power level, but you'd be very, very sorry if you tried to fight a larger bot. The power ..."

Sam hadn't gone through geometry that long ago, and he'd thought the same thing about his goals and Bumblebee's goals, and their relationship in -- "Congruence," he said. "Same thing, but bigger is bigger."

"Yeah," he agreed, sounding satisfied that he'd gotten the idea across even without knowing the English word. "Of course, then it all changes when you get modifications, but ... anyway, that's a null," he explained, pointing to Sam's arm that was still an arm, "and this is a cannon. Now let's try firing."

"At what?" he demanded incredulously, "and how?"

"Like this --"

There was another pinch-tickle, and suddenly it whirled to life, lit, and _fired_. There was a definite back-kick to it, but since Sideswipe had a grip on his arm, Sam got none of it and therefore wasn't paying attention to that -- he was staring at the bolt of energy that was sailing away into the darkness like a run-away firework. It hit the ground and there was a very audible concussive force.

Sideswipe whistled -- well, he made a whistling _sound_. "Shiny," he said approval. "More kick than I expected from a bot your size. Of course, that's not going to make anyone bigger than you blink twice, Boxy."

"What do you mean?"

They hadn't gone so far that Sunstreaker had to raise his voice to be heard, and Sam twisted his head around to see the yellow bot put his hands on his hip plates. "He means that you'd be a lot better off running from a fight than trying to defend yourself."

"Oh," Sam said. "Okay. I can do that. I'm -- good at that, I think. Yeah."

"That's what being a chasebot means, Boxy," Sideswipe said. "Now you try it."

Like clenching his fist ... Sam's body had recorded the events going on in his arm, and Sam felt secure in his ability to copy it. He remembered the pulse of energy that had started the cannon turning, and the steady suck of power as it had charged, and the _push_ that had come as it fired. So he pulsed and fed and _pushed_ and the cannon fired again, another bolt in the darkness that landed with a _whump_.

He felt a little giddy.

That was certainly not a good thing, his processors told him, but Sam didn't really care at the moment. He was on sane ground again, and he could connect wirelessly to human signals -- it came easily to him, where he got the feeling that the other two had a hard time translating them all -- and now he could shoot. _Minibots_ didn't come with cannons, but he didn't bother saying that to Sideswipe. It had been six weeks, but Sam did not forget his frustration or the pure glee had taken in destroying the stone wall, because it made him _feel better_. Because he'd had an _effect_, he'd been able to _do_ something. Shooting the cannon felt a lot the same.

"Good," Sideswipe congratulated him -- then, "wait, wait -- _stop_, Boxy -- _stop_ --"

"He said _stop_," Sunstreaker growled, smacking Sam over the head.

He winced, grasping at it with the one hand he had left. Maybe he'd gotten a little too over excited ... shooting his cannon like that. But it felt good. He stared forlornly at the burning weeds and the glassed sand. It was kind of pretty, actually ... to his sensors, the fire blossomed out it wavering fields in colors he couldn't describe ... or maybe it wasn't colors, but just radiation patterns. It was pretty, either way ... made him think of the bizarre dream he had, and the sky overhead in twisting unknowable colors. Sam liked it. There would probably be some _strange_ reports in the morning news, but he still liked it.

Strange news indeed -- a boat ran ashore, no evidence of the hijackers, and craters of blasted sand? Hmm ... wonder what that could _possibly_ be. Sarcasm, sarcasm.

"Your aim _sucks_," Sideswipe informed him, looking at him strangely. It was kind of like cautious and kind of like ... it was slightly familiar, but Sam didn't know what to call it.

_Aliens_, he reminded himself. It was becoming easier to forget, because _he_ was shaped like they were, and they moved ... not the same, but they used the same apparatus, and .... "I didn't even know _how_ to activate my cannon," Sam said dryly. "How in the hell am I supposed to aim? This thing isn't laser guided."

"It shouldn't _have_ to be," Sunstreaker rumbled.

"Yeah, you _should_ have programs that will calculate the angle and distance and adjust for the power, and -- you should just be able to point and shoot," Sideswipe agreed, sounding a little baffled.

So Sam was a freak of nature. What else was new? "I think I shot too many times," he said grudgingly, a warning popping up in his brain that his power levels had just finished taking a plunge.

"Yeah," Sideswipe said, releasing Sam's arm and slinging it over his shoulder -- Sam should have known better than to teach them more about human culture, but they'd been trying to teach him Cybertronian and so it was only _payback_ -- and dragging Sam over the dunes so that he stumbled along more than walked. Sideswipe was roughly two feet taller than he was, and nearly an entire ton heavier, and Sam didn't have much choice in the matter. "That's what happens when you not only exceed point-oh-six RPA, but you only have a firing lull of two-k astronds. 'Sokay, though, 'Streaker and I had the same problem."

Moments later, the three of them had made it to a road and were zipping down it -- okay, so _Sam_ was zipping, the other two were just prowling. This whole Mini thing was getting on Sam's nerves again. Of course, they had to go some distance to get away from the area before Sam could recharge ... nothing more suspicious than three brand-new cars sitting between a bombing site and a crashed ship. He had proved that he could shoot, and transform his arm -- both of them -- of his own free will, but he foresaw quite a bit of weapons practice in his future to work on that nasty thing called '_aim_'.

But the thing was ... although he had gotten used to picking up stray airwaves over the ocean, where they were fewer, they were now on American soil and Americans just liked all of their electronics and radio signals and -- and it was pretty much bombarding him. But no matter what it was, it had the dry, whiny, harsh American sound to the words, and Sam finally got the feeling that he was _almost home_ ... and with every mile that passed under his wheels, the Autobots drew nearer ... and the less Sam cared about learning how to aim, and the less he cared about stopping to recharge. Soon, sooner than soon, he'd be among friends, and Mikaela and Miles and Bumblebee.

_Bumblebee_.

"(Alright, this should be good enough,)" Sideswipe said as they pulled into the overnight diner where no one would blink at cars being there for a while. "(Charge tight, Boxy -- don't let the Decepticons bite.)"

"(God,)" Sam said, "(I should _never_ have taught you the first thing about humanity.)"

"(I like them,)" the red bot mused back, longer frequency betraying that he was also shutting down in preparation recharge. "(They're absolutely _glitched_.)"

"(Yeah, well, good night to you, too.)" Right before he completely slipped under, he sent, "(and right back at you.)"

-+-

It only took as long as crossing the state line from Maine, where'd they'd crash landed, to New Hampshire for Sam to figure out what was bugging him so completely. He'd just spent sixty days being able to be bipedal whenever he wanted and only occasionally being forced to hide ... to being right in the middle of population and people again. This totally and completely reminded Sam that he didn't really fit under the shell of the Mini all that comfortably ... and that he'd be spending a ridiculous amount of time stuffed into it. This wasn't to say that Sam had breaks in the illusion of the Mini, just ...

... just that he'd realized that he'd been randomly opening his doors. Which was ... well, it was _weird_. Maybe not for Cybertronians, though -- Sideswipe never shut up about anything, and he would have definitely commented on this strange behavior if it was all that strange, right? ... Right?

Still, Sam was weirding himself out. He definitely had to find a better car to be.

And _no_, thank you, the reason_ wasn't_ because the thought of coming back to Mikaela and Bumblebee and the others as a ... a _Mini Cooper_ was embarrassing. _Shut up, no it wasn't_! After all, the fact that Sam was alive at all and had made it so long as a robot, especially with the two Lamborghini jerks' so called 'help', was impressive! ... but he was a Mini Cooper, and they nicknamed him _Boxy_. And maybe it had something to do with his ... weird preoccupation thing with Bumblebee, but he ... just couldn't convince himself that it was worth it, showing up as a freakin' Mini Cooper.

Hell, he hadn't liked the form to begin with!

And it was tiny and compressed him more than he cared to admit. He was running _hot_, traveling all the time without a break except to recharge. He needed _someway_ of getting more airflow over his engine.

So it was as he was searching for some kind of alt that would provide such that his attention was distracted by the jerk duo again. Sideswipe was, of course, once again wandering all over the goddamned road, only in America, that pissed off the people in his lane of traffic, not just the oncoming traffic. Luckily, they had escaped the city and were headed through less traveled country, so it wasn't so bad. Some distance behind Sam, Sunstreaker was bring up the rear. And ... being creepy. Not in any intentional, overt way ... just ...

Sunstreaker was, by far, the most _quiet_ Autobot that Sam had the dubious pleasure of working with. While Bumblebee was by far the most expressive, always making some noise and shifting what noise he was making just as swiftly as he thought, the others weren't exactly silent. Optimus Prime made a continuous if slow clicking, Ratchet rumbled softly, like an idling engine far in the distance, and even Ironhide hummed (not unlike the sound of his weapons charging, now that Sam thought about it). Sunstreaker, on the other hand, would fall completely silent for stretches of a few hours before making some small short noise, and either murmuring quietly or falling silent again.

It really, _really_ freaked Sam out.

So maybe he could be excused when he thought it was extremely serious when Sunstreaker suddenly bellowed, "_what the slag_!" Out loud. As in, not over the radio. Luckily, they were the only cars on the road, and were allowed to react. Sideswipe and Sam slowed to a stop and kicked into reverse to return to the place that Sunstreaker was now sitting. The squealing tires had been so impressive that Sam was surprised that there wasn't _rubber_ down there on the road.

"What?" Sideswipe demanded in a strange tone. Sam wasn't sure what to make of it, because while the red Lamborghini didn't sound worried, he didn't sound nonchalant either.

"I -- I slagging _ran over something_, it's all over my tires -- _By Primus, it just ran out in front of me!_"

Sam actually had to stop and rerun the last minute of records he had, and concluded that what had happened just did. "Um, yeah," he said in disbelief. "Squirrels. They do that."

This made both mechs fall completely silent, but they fairly radiated horror. Finally, Sideswipe managed to muster some sort of response. "What the _slag_?"

It seemed to wake up his comrade. "_What the pit is wrong with these things that they intentionally get run over_?!" Sunstreaker demanded hysterically. "_It's body juices are on me, get it off_!"

It probably wasn't a good idea to laugh uncontrollably at aliens like those two, but Sam couldn't really help it. Up until this point, he had been so disturbed by them that such a sudden culture shock was nothing sort of a relief. Humans barely blinked at running over squirrels -- well, most didn't, some people tried to swerve to avoid them, he knew that -- but these aliens that hadn't blinked at crashing that cop almost a week ago were freaking out over road kill.

"Just transform, you idiot!"

"Oh, no! Pit, no! No, right now it's isolated so -- just -- _get it off_!"

Sam got control of himself. "Um, like ... " he sputtered a little more, seeing the biggest jerk ever shudder on his wheels, "humans -- they wash their cars, you know? They have like -- public baths. For their cars."

The Lamborghinis were quiet for a moment, and then Sideswipe said, brightly, "he's right! We can go one of those, 'Streaker."

Sunstreaker wasn't nearly as happy, but after grumbling unintelligibly in their secret alien language for a while, he reluctantly consented. But he drove like someone walking in pants that had soda spilled on them, and Sam had to disconnect his vocalizer so that he could keep his humor to himself. It took them twenty minutes to reach the next town, and another ten to locate a car wash, and Sunstreaker was in just a foul mood that even Sideswipe was skirting his vicinity.

The problem that went unforeseen by this brilliant plan was that car washes needed quarters. "What now?" Sunstreaker demanded venomously.

"Umm ..." Sam thought it over, then realized that he knew the answer to that, too. "Wait here." He triggered his transformation, and while Sideswipe did the same and tried to puzzle out this strange human contraption, Sam went next door, where there was a soda machine.

"God," he murmured to himself, "I hope you're not alive. You aren't a Mountain Dew machine, but still ..." Then he grasped the machine, and thrust his claw into it. The Earth metal gave easily, and he peeled it open like a can of sardines. Dollars and quarters went everywhere. Sam hesitated for a moment, while his human reasoning said that he could use some cash, even stolen cash, and his more logical parts said, 'yes, but where would you keep it?' Logic won, and Sam carefully picked up enough quarters to wash Sunstreaker's undercarriage.

Oh, by the way -- picking up quarters with fingers that were six or seven inches long? Easier said than done. Luckily, he didn't have the strong broad fingers that Bumblebee did, and his claws managed well enough.

When he got back to the car wash, Sunstreaker had taken up residence in the largest stall, and Sideswipe was studying the dials curiously. No doubt he had downloaded even more information off the Internet so that he understood the meaning behind them more clearly.

"Now why didn't we think of something like this, Boxy?" he asked, turning to greet Sam as he arrived. "I mean, I hear that on Cybertron, there were places you could go to clean your own armor when sonics got old, but a pressure wash system with soap or wax? Where has this wax been all my life?"

Sam stared at him for a long speechless moment, which Sideswipe took no notice of, slipping into the alien language and supposedly talking to Sunstreaker. Hadn't Bumblebee shown up that day looking like liquid coated hotness? What was Sideswipe talking about? Unless whatever had made Bumblebee that shiny hadn't been some strange Cybertronian compound but -- wax? Which reminded Sam, he'd washed Bumblebee from time to time, but he'd never waxed him and -- abruptly, his mind went places he was far from ready for it to go, and he shook his head to clear it.

Setting himself to the difficult task of manipulating controls meant for human hands, Sam decided that soap would be best to use to remove squirrel guts, and set about inserting coins ... still not easy. "Alright," he said at last, "I think I have it." He fumbled with the nozzle and finally managed to get it out.

"_What the slag are you doing_?"

He turned and stared. Sideswipe had a tight grip on Sunstreaker's front end, as evidenced by the jerking and squeaking of the tires as they tried to let Sunstreaker back up.

"Well, you said its juices were all over your tires, so we have to pick you up to wash it off," Sideswipe said reasonably.

"Put -- me -- down, Sideswipe, or I swear to _Primus_, you will regret it," Sunstreaker said with a dangerous rumble.

Sideswipe considered it, visibly. Then he said, "I can live with that," and hefted.

Sam only hesitated a little before he turned the force of the water on the underside of the other Autobot. Sunstreaker's engine made a horrible noise, and he was swiftly reaching the pitch that Ratchet had the time he'd arrived with Bumblebee to find out that Prime had tricked Sam into reviving Jazz. Sam felt vaguely perverse, washing the underside of a vehicle he knew was really an alien, but he figured that it had to be done because Sunstreaker had thrown such a fit about the squirrel guts, and even sluiced down the tires really well, despite the way they spun and slung water all over Sideswipe and himself.

As the water from the nozzle petered out, Sideswipe looked at him. "Okay," he said cheerfully, "when I let go, run."

"Why?" Sam asked.

Sideswipe's optics flickered. "You have to ask?" he said in surprise, and then dropped Sunstreaker. The yellow Lamborghini bounced on the rubber tires, and then his engine _shrieked_ as the tires spun so furiously that Sunstreaker actually began to _slide_ sideways, and Sam figured that maybe, just _maybe_, Sideswipe knew what he was talking about. He dropped the nozzle as Sideswipe transformed into his car shape nearly as quickly as he'd left it to dry heave on the boat, and Sideswipe took off, being the loyal and responsible mech that he was.

Sam didn't have the sort of faith in his ability to transform quickly that it took to do that, and settled for bolting as a robot. Since he'd pretty much gone from crawling to running within the first few hours of being in this body, it wasn't all that surprising that when Sam bolted, he actually _bolted_. The freakish claw-like feet that had failed him so miserably on the beach actually worked pretty good to get traction.

It didn't really matter, though, because as fast as Sideswipe was as a Lamborghini, and Sam might prove to be as a robot, Sunstreaker was out for blood and hell bent on revenge. Sideswipe made it barely out of town before he was run off the road and into a tree. Sam actually managed to make it a mile on the virtue of being more maneuverable, but Sunstreaker still tripped Sam into a ditch.

"( ... that's gonna leave a mark ...)" Sideswipe sent dazedly.

"(I think I cracked a headlight ... )" Sam groaned, pulling himself out of the bushes. He'd _tried_ to catch himself on a tree, but missed. It stung, a little. Still, he'd gotten out of the situation relatively light ... when they finally regrouped, with Sunstreaker still in a foul mood but no longer murderous, the red Lamborghini looked like it had fought one of those monster trucks and lost. Still, Sideswipe's cheerful mood prevailed, no matter how badly the thumping was as his crooked tire turned. Sam felt rather lucky, even if his facial plate was dented. It wasn't like anything but the headlight would show in his car mode.

Christ. If he knew that Sideswipe had been setting them up to take the brunt of Sunstreaker's questionable temper, he would have never mentioned the car wash.

"(What are you so happy about?)" he grumbled at Sideswipe.

"(Well,)" Sideswipe said brightly, "(it won't even take two planetary rotations to get to California, which is where you said the Autobots were -- and that means Ratchet. He'll be so happy to fix me up, he'll blow a fuse!)"

... were they even talking about the same mechanic? Granted, Sam didn't really know Ratchet all that well, but the week he'd been around him, Sam hadn't seen much _happiness_. Ratchet might be blowing a fuse, that was sure, but ... from _happiness_? "(I think,)" he said slowly to Sunstreaker over a private line, "(that you might have hit him a little hard.)"

"(Don't talk to me,)" Sunstreaker grumbled, engine growling.

Maybe they would all be better off finishing the journey in radio silence.

* * *

- LONGEST CHAPTER YET! You have no idea how surprised I was to learn that it would take only 46 or 47 hours to drive from Maine to California. That is, of course, without sleeping and baring unforeseen obstacles, which Sideswipe's statement completely failed to include. Like the fact that Sam has to recharge ever twenty hours, the Decepticons between here and there, and in about seven hours, four newly arrived Autobots and one neutral. (TEASERS? IN MEI'S A/Ns? It's more likely than you think!)

- Sideswipe's comments about Sam's fingers is actually an 'LOL' at this picture I saw on dA by midydoof, in which Wheeljack did exactly that (and then got his arm blown off.)

- **I know I told some of you that the Sam and Bee reunion would be taking place in a few chapters, but ... **either the chapters will be huge to fit in everything that needs to be fit in, or it's going to be a few more chapters than that. Also, in order to trim the chapters and keep the story somewhat on track as a Sam-centric story, lots of stuff happened at Autobot basecamp while Sam was at sea, so that will seem really sudden when Sam joins back up with them.

- Why is it that it seems like the longer my chapters are, the less there is to read? ?__?


	17. On A Road With No Name

HAI GAIZ. LONG TIME IS LONG. The writer gods have heard your fury, and removed Teh Block, at least enough for a mei to spit this up. So if this chapter reads retardedly, that's why.  
1) ENTER: ROTF CHARACTERS. But not the plot. No sunharvesters or Fallen for you.  
2) I got around to fixing Jazz's Intermission, but not the others. Faildrabbles are still failing.

* * *

**Chapter Fifteen: On A Road With No Name**_  
Today will be Prowly, with traces of emotion throughout the mission..._

-+-

They were soon on the road again, despite a brief stop for Sam to recharge ... brief, since even though he had to shut down pretty often, it didn't take long for his processor to sort and file all the new data and install the new software constantly being written. And wow, when he could think that _calmly_, he _knew_ there was something just really wrong with the situation. Then again, the driving was pretty brain numbing, so maybe it was less his being okay with the situation, and more him being so completely mesmerized by the dull roar of pavement zooming by so close to his audials. He supposed that they were lucky that robots didn't fall asleep out of boredom, or he would have fallen asleep and crashed a long time ago.

"( ... this human is revving his engine at me,)" Sunstreaker sent suddenly, startling Sam out of his daze. A quick scan informed him that they were on their way out of yet another town, and that Sunstreaker ahead of them was stopped at a light, right next to a mustang that was definitely hitting the gas pedal just a little.

Unintentionally, Sam had dropped back away from the violent freak to cruise slightly ahead of Sideswipe, who was still suffering severely hindered movement in his vehicle form, and from time to time ... in his head, too. Sunstreaker could say that Sideswipe would recover all he wanted, Sam was really getting worried about the fact that the red mech hadn't strayed from his lane of traffic in a while.

"(Weird,)" Sideswipe commented, and he certainly _sounded_ fine, but ... "(What do you think it wants?)"

"(Racing, duh,)" Sam cut in as they got in line at the light. Despite the healthy distance that the two of them put between themselves and Sunstreaker after his revenge, there were only a few cars between them because few people were traveling as late as they were.

Sunstreaker didn't respond for an entire second, which betrayed just how bemused he was. Sunstreaker didn't _need_ time to calculate his responses -- he just made them. "(Why in the frag would he think I'd want to race _him_?)"

"(Because,)" he said, just a little amused, "(his mustang costs a fraction of the sticker price of a brand new Lamborghini, and this offends the size of his -- you know. Manhood.)" What a cheesy word, but it'd been the first to come to mind.

"( ... what the holy slag does his reproductive processes have to do with this?)" Sideswipe demanded, sounding grossed out. He had apparently downloaded a few porny romance novels for women, since there had been no delay at all, and therefore no time for references. And the only reason _Sam_ knew the most popular use of the word was because when he was much younger, he'd run across his mother's secret stash of books and had the psychological scars to prove it. He filed this new information about Sideswipe's reading preferences for later consideration.

"(Oh -- I dunno,)" Sam said, not feeling up to trying to explain the complexities of human biological and psychological insanity at the moment. "(It's mostly ego. He wants to prove that he's better than Sunstreaker.)"

Then apparently the light turned green, because suddenly two sets of tires spun out and one holographic yellow and one black car shot across the intersection. The second set of cars, the ones behind Sunstreaker and the mustang, were a little slow to follow suit ... everyone had been startled by it, it seemed.

"(Wha -- wait!)" Sideswipe cried, sounding completely panicked. "(Where's he going?! Boxy, go after him!)"

"(Wait -- wait, no, no, no -- why me?)" Sam demanded in surprise, not even budging as the car in front of him pulled forward.

"(I can't go faster than sixty five on this stupid wheel,)" Sideswipe snarled. "(And you're a chasebot -- _chase him_, slaggit!)"

"(I don't _wanna_ chase him!)" Sam exclaimed, "(he's a crazy, violent freak!)"

"(And what do you think that means for the human?)"

Ah. Well, Sideswipe had him there.

The two racers had quite the head start, and Sam had a disadvantage of not knowing the roads like the time that he had raced both Lamborghinis at the same time, but ... Sunstreaker wasn't even trying to hide himself, and to Sam's only recently activated scanners, he could sense the flare of Cybertronian energy somewhere ahead. With one last scan at the damaged vehicle beside him, he reluctantly set off to see if he couldn't dissuade the larger bot from completely blowing their cover. The thing was that Sunstreaker had gotten an entire five second head start, going full speed, and his form was much more aerodynamic than Sam's.

_Com'n, com'n, com'n_, he thought to himself, _faster, faster, faster -- I'm supposed to be __**faster**__ than this!_

He certainly remembered being faster. It was frustrating. Sam really, really needed a better alt form because he had this nagging feeling he was supposed to be able to move _faster_ and the only thing he could think of that was holding him back was the stupid shape of the form he was in.

But he was still on his way to catching up to the two idiots -- and, not that Sam realized it, but it meant he was actually going _faster_ than they were -- and even had them on scanner when the black mustang abruptly swung over and lightly bumped Sunstreaker. The comline between Sunstreaker and Sam and Sideswipe crackled wide open for a shocked second, and then Sunstreaker snarled: "(_he left black marks on my paint!_)"

Sam was distracted for a moment, thinking about how pissed _he_ be if some jerk left black streaks on his _very_ yellow car, and then wondering why there hadn't been any paint streaks earlier when Sunstreaker had run first his companion and then Sam off the road -- and in that moment, Sunstreaker swerved wide and then swung right back into the mustang with a loud crash.

He was struck dumb for one horrified instant -- and in the next, realized that no matter how loud it had been, having seen Sunstreaker do the same thing to Sideswipe ... hell, this tap was almost _gentle_ in comparison. Which was to say that an angry cat's clawing was gentle compared to a tiger's swipe. Even if Sunstreaker had somehow come to terms with not carelessly disregarding human life, he was about as cuddly as a cactus with one inch poisoned thorns. Sam had come to know that very well during the entire journey across the Atlantic.

Still, even a 'love tap' from Sunstreaker was enough to nearly steal control out of the human driver's hands, and his mustang swerved wildly, nearly spinning around at one point. "(_Sunstreaker_!)" Sam yelped over the comline, "(no hurting the humans! Stop poking them, _dammit_, what the hell is wrong with you!?)"

"(His stupid ugly dead paint is all over my side!)" Sunstreaker growled, swerving abstractly -- or not: it gave Sam's scanners a good clear view of the total of _two_ black marks, one not even an inch long.

"(Oh, _boo fucking hoo_!)" Sam yelled, his increasingly weak grasp on his temper snapping. "(We'll get a goddamned buffer, _princess_. Back the fuck off the human before you get more of the _evil tar _on your sorry painted hide!)"

Sunstreaker swerved again but wildly this time, which had the amusing visual quality of a child stomping his foot. Still, he let up on the acceleration and let the guy in the black mustang speed off. The guy wasn't very likely to challenge Lamborghinis to a race ever again, if the reckless way he took a turn was any indication. Pulling over, the Autobot came to a sudden and jarring halt, so that the dust from the side of the road drifted up and swept past his wheels.

"(What are you going to do about my _paint job_?)" he demanded as Sam pulled over, dodging past him so that he could come to a sideways stop in front of the Lamborghini.

"(Will you _stop worrying about your paint job_,)" Sam demanded irritably. "(It doesn't even look that good!)"

Sunstreaker's engine cut off.

Sam got the rather intense feeling that the alien wasn't sure if he'd rather be hurt or riled or hurt_ and_ riled. He decided to put an end to that internal debate. "(You sorry excuse for an Autobot,)" he added, without much bite but still painfully blunt, "(you _left_ Sideswipe behind to get into some kind of _human dominance ritual_ with someone pathetically low on the social ladder! You _busted his freakin' wheel_, Sunstreaker. He can't even go the _speed limit_. You know, I knew you were a huge jerk, but that's just _cruel_.)"

All signs of life from Sunstreaker ceased abruptly, and it wasn't because he was pulling the 'innocent object' sparkle act, either. "(You don't know a Pitslagged thing about us,)" he said suddenly, and it was _strange_. Before, there had always been some sort of _voice_ to the transmissions, but this came across merely as _information_ -- no intonation or feeling at all.

And it was true, too. Sam thought back to the time that he and Mikaela had _slipped_ from Optimus' shoulder, and the brief impact against his foot and nothing -- so certain he was going to die and then the metal grip around his ribs and painful whiplash as the world rolled. And Bumblebee had been _left behind_ ... and maybe if things hadn't worked out like that, maybe if Megatron had never begun to awake ... maybe Bumblebee would have never been rescued at all. Maybe that was the kind of race that Sam belonged to, now.

But at the same time -- "(He's your _partner_,)" he said, sure of that much. He knew there was _some kind_ of feeling there, _almost_ one he could recognize, but 'partner' would work for now. "(Your friend, right? You're supposed to have each other's back, but you _broke_ him and left him behind --)"

Sam's instincts were ahead of him, because he only got a chance to _really_ process what was going on _after_ he'd already spun out, trying to withdraw, but it was hard to do with a ton of weight behind a humming cannon pressed to his hood. The moment Sam had said that Sunstreaker broke Sideswipe, the yellow mech had stood up and slammed his cannon hard enough into Sam's hood to dent it, and the heat of building energy was _scorching_. Sunstreaker was whirling and clicking away in their alien language, and it certainly _sounded_ threatening -- Sam realized that he could actually _understand_ the 'threatening' bits (not the threats themselves, but the intention to harm), and he shoved hard so that bits of Sam groaned under the strain.

And because Sam had never learned to keep his mouth shut, he added, "(yeah, that's right, Sunstreaker -- shooting out my engine really changes what you did. You don't like hearing that kind of truth -- _stop making it true_.)"

Gears squealed as Sunstreaker shoved down on him again, but then he jerked back and set his boot to Sam's bumper, shoving him back so that his tires ground over the asphalt. With another firm shove, Sam was sent sliding backwards and spinning slightly over the loose rocks while Sunstreaker and his screaming cannon stalked across the road and disappeared into the shadowed darkness.

(Half formed thoughts of another race like humanity that shouldn't have risen to the top of the food chain but had anyway tangled and got confused with the sudden and painful reminder that _prey_ were not the only ones who hid so effectively.)

It took a good long few moments before those same processes that had once told Sam that he was _slag_ disengaged, and his doors popped open and swung out fully. Every last part of Sam that _could_ was quivering slightly in the aftermath of that extremely deadly confrontation. He made a mental note to learn better survival tactics while his fans tried desperately to cool the searing metal of his hood, repair systems initialize to fix the blistered paint and the slight warping of the metal. His bumper was a little dented and scratched, but other than those rather disturbing signs of what had just happened, he was perfectly fine.

Now he just had to ... regroup with Sideswipe who was probably still a few good miles back down the road, and Sunstreaker, who had run off like -- like some kind of ... "fraggin' drama queen."

His windshield wipers twitched in slightly hysterical humor.

A car passed by in a swoosh of chilled night air and a lonely roar, headlights stabbing through the night. It reminded Sam to close his doors, but he was still shaking a little. What had he been _thinking_? Normally, he kept talking when threatened, yes -- but he _rolled over_. He bent to the will of whatever it was threatening him. It worked all the time with humans -- had he decided at some point that it _didn't_ work with Cybertronians? Rolling over hadn't worked with Barricade -- or maybe he'd just been too terrified to say the right things. Then again, rolling over hadn't worked with Simmons, either, and he was the definition of a _bully_.

Maybe it had less to do with Sam trying to cope and more to do with the fact that he was fucking _tired_ of rolling over. Sunstreaker was the kind of jerk that everyone recognized that way, and Sam had _bent_ to their will and _bent_ and _bent_ and then Sunstreaker just royally _trashed_ Sideswipe who had only meant well (even if he was having fun at the same time, at Sunstreaker's expense). There was something _broken_ there, it wasn't working right, and Sam wanted to _fix it_.

Which was strange. Sam really wasn't a fixing kind of person. If it worked, then it wasn't broken, and that was that. No doubt the two of them had been partners forever -- they moved way too much alike, like they didn't even have to anticipate the others actions and reactions. It was kind of creepy, but it was _them_. It worked.

But there was, he felt, _something_ broken there. Some kind of kink. Like his dad's stupid hose when it twisted and turned and flipped over to squeeze shut and allow only the barest trickles of water through. And his dad was always saying, "_Sammy, do me a favor and fix that, won't you?_" But Sam was not the fixing kind of person.

The dents in his hood and bumper straightened with a pop, startling Sam who both heard and felt it. It felt a little like cracking his neck, to be honest ... consulting his repair systems informed him that most of the paint had been repaired, but it would be an hour or so before he could spare the energy to fix the parts damaged by the heat. Fun times. He might just have to wait until the next time he recharged, actually. Sure, it would be another twenty hours, but it had only been thirty -- well, now forty five minutes since he woke up, and making them all stop again for another five hours any sooner than he had to just didn't sound like a good idea. Especially not with Sideswipe's wheel being the way it was. Whether Ratchet would be happy about it or not, Sideswipe needed _someone_ to fix him, and Sam didn't know how and Sunstreaker probably didn't either.

Sam heard the betraying thump of the unaligned wheel long before he heard the muttered curses. Sideswipe wasn't even going thirty. He was _limping_ along and the same sickening sense of things being _off_ that had driven him to berate Sunstreaker on what a poor example of Autobotness he was swamped Sam. It was just like the time that Bumblebee had been iced, just like when Bumblebee's _legs had been blown off_ --

No, not quite. Sam was getting the freakish idea that maybe his preoccupation with Bumblebee had started way earlier than he thought it had. He'd been -- panicked and _desperate_ when Bumblebee was hurt, and right now all he had was the needling sensation of _fixitfixitfixit_ that he'd had when he realized that Mojo's leg had been _broken_, and that nauseating sense of responsibility even though he hadn't had anything to do with how it got broken.

"(Are you going to be okay?)" he sent tentatively, ignoring the irritable sense of dismay the whirls and purrs and clicks had.

Sideswipe's momentum stuttered as a pause that shouldn't have been notable was made so by his tire. "(Fine!)" he sent back cheerfully.

"(Liar,)" Sam said flatly. He could see the way that weird aura the Lamborghini had to some of his sensors was prickling. The fact that it was there at all made him even more anxious.

As if catching on, it disappeared completely. "(Where the frag is Sunstreaker?)"

"(Pouting.)"

Sideswipe limped over with the air of someone leaning close as if not to misunderstand. "(_Pouting_? What the frag did you do?)"

"(Er,)" he said, pretty sure that Sideswipe didn't want to hear about Sam berating his companion. "(Actually, it was more like ... that black mustang smeared his paint job.)"

Sideswipe considered this for a moment. Then -- "(_what did you do_?)" he demanded, making a subsonic wail at the same time. It wasn't even necessary to confine the noise to the comline, since they were tire to tire and humans couldn't hear it anyway.

"(I didn't do anything!)" Sam snapped ... more like whined. He was slightly mortified to realize that something about the wail had made him go on the defensive with less defensive and more apologetic.

"(You must have!)" Sideswipe said, nearly hysterically, "(you must have! Where is he! What did you _do_?)"

"(I --)" Abruptly, the thoughts that had gone racing off came back to Sam with results that made his entire demeanor shift from defensive to outraged. "(You're yanking my chain, you jerk!)"

"(S'cos you're way too easy, Boxy,)" Sideswipe said, making that white noise.

Sam wasn't sure how to take it, that his naiveté was enough to make Sideswipe produce the same sound that hunting Decepticons and talking about weapon systems did. He settled for locking it up in a corner and setting it aside to be ignored safely once they were back with the Autobots and Sideswipe no longer had a reason _not_ to be hunting Decepticons with weapons of mass destruction. The sound of a transformation jerked him out of his internal workings, and Sideswipe straightened, gripping his shoulder and rolling it a little. The hitch was noticeable, even to Sam's unpracticed scanners.

"Well," Sideswipe said, glancing about and scanning up and down the road -- unnecessary, there wasn't much traffic on this road this late, the last of which being the car that had passed earlier. "Let's go find my wayward counterpart."

"(Right,)" Sam sighed, triggering his own transformation. Despite the amount of time he's spent at sea not doing much _else_ but transforming, he still wasn't as fast at either of the jerks and it got on his nerves. The threat of being left alone by the roadside made him hurry his feet -- claw -- things, lengthening his stride to catch up to Sideswipe's knowing steps. "Where are you going?" he asked, glancing down to the sure placement and out into the darkness and back and forth a few times.

"After Sunstreaker," Sideswipe explained patiently, which he never was except when he was treating Sam like he was both mentally ill _and_ retarded. "He's just about -- there," he added, pointing into the darkness.

Sam scanned curiously, but couldn't spot any extraneous glimmer of light or flash of moon off armor or heat or energy signature at all. "I, apparently, still suck at this," he reluctantly informed the red mech. "I can't see him at all."

"No, you wouldn't," he said, waving it off. "He's too far out for scanners, and in what _passes_ for stealth mode for 'Streaker. Not that it's really that stealthy. You know, if you ask me, 'Streaker has a bit of junk code in there somewhere that works against him, makes him _want_ to be noticed. The poor, poor fool."

Sometimes Sideswipe was just plain _weird_. Other than the whole ... crazy thing that made him sometimes get all ... dangerous and hate the slightest noise. Then some things about what Sideswipe was saying struck Sam as weird. "Wait, wait, wait," he bid, waving his claws until the red mech glanced down at him. "If he's too far out for scanners, and _stealthing_, how do you know where he is?"

Sideswipe paused, and actually managed to project self-consciousness. "Did I say that out loud?" He reached up to tap the lower portion of his helmet as if trying to mimic the human act of putting his hand on his mouth, but not being entirely certain of the logic behind the action. Considering that the vocal processes actually emanated from somewhere between neck and chin, and not what Sam thought of as their mouth, anyway, it was probably exactly that.

Sam wasn't amused. He might have let Sideswipe escape on the value of his (_probably_, now that he thought about it) exaggerated injury and the general foolishness of his mockery of human gestures, but ... Sideswipe was still a jerk, even if he was downright friendly compared to Sunstreaker. "_Yes_. If he's doing all of that, then he must _really_ suck at it if _you_ know where he is."

With a jerk, the mech halted and whipped around to look at Sam in something like disbelief. "Oh, wow, Boxy," he said, "I don't even know where to start with that one. Did you just manage to insult_ both_ of us in one sentence?"

"Maybe," he admitted reluctantly, taking a few cautious steps back from Sideswipe just to get him out of arm's reach. Although it was Sunstreaker who was so fond of trying to hit him on his head fins, which was really _really_ painful, he didn't put it past Sideswipe to mimic the other.

He shouldn't have worried, because Sideswipe just began to hum in amusement. He tended to forget that if there was any humor to be seen in the situation, Sideswipe would find it. He turned away to continue tracking his companion, beckoning Sam after him. "I know because he's my counterpart," he said simply.

Which was the _second_ time he'd called him that. "What does that mean?" If Sideswipe had said any number of other things, Sam might have tried to come up with some human analog for what he thought the mech was suggesting, but ... 'counterpart' was stunningly vague. He said it like it was supposed to _mean_ something to Sam, but ...

"Well, you know," Sideswipe said, and Sam was too big of a liar _not_ to notice evasive maneuvers when he heard them, "even you should know that we come in models with certain specifications. Before the war, it wasn't that uncommon to cross paths with a mech that looks a lot like you, only with slightly different configurations or alt mode or software."

Though he sometimes still had difficulties with concepts like that, because that said _robot_ to Sam while looking at any of the Autobots made himself think _living creature_, Sam thought he got it at least a little. "And that's what you two are? That's what makes you -- 'counterparts'?"

"Yes -- no," Sideswipe said, fidgeting. A giant robot doesn't fidget the way a human does, but by spinning tires and shifting components in their body like they're about to initiate a transformation but not getting that far. "No" he repeated, deciding he liked that answer better, "it doesn't matter."

Sam withdrew a little from the searching mech. The entire subject had gotten him all kinds of worked up and the last thing that Sam really wanted was the pair of them worked up over _anything_. It was bad enough that Sunstreaker was already so upset he'd actually threatened to _kill_ Sam, he didn't need Sideswipe to have another psychotic episode.

All the same, he was a bit confused by the direction they were heading. It wasn't like Maine had fields of grass for cows like they sometimes had in California -- or at least, as far as Sam had seen, they didn't, but they were in _some kind_ of abandoned district. The homeless in Los Angeles would have scorned this area -- it might be a place to sleep in, but it was dangerously decrepit. Maybe someone had gotten started constructing something, but then the funds went out, and they'd had to stop ... or maybe they got mostly through a deconstruction, then the land was decided to be useless? Weird.

Sideswipe mostly moved with surety through the mess of steal and concrete, only pausing briefly every once in a while to recalculate his path. Sam tried to stick near to the larger bot, half because it was simply _habit_ for him to remain close to a mechanical creature much larger than him, but also because the place was really beginning to creep him out. "(Why would Sunstreaker come hang out here?)" he asked, forgoing the attempt to whisper by using the radio. "(It's dusty as hell, and the way he bitches about _water spots_ ...)"

"(It's a good way to blow slag up without attracting native attention,)" Sideswipe said, reaching back blindly to only briefly touch a spike of Sam's shoulder armor. "(Not that he's blowing slag up, or we'd hear it. Be careful, Boxy.)"

For not being a tactile species (because, Mikaela's voice said with fascination and a bit of 'duh, why didn't I think of that?', touch is a warm blooded trait), Sideswipe sure did _touch_ a hell of a lot. Sam had watched him tap his bumper against Sunstreaker's side and elbow the yellow mech and that wasn't even addressing the way he'd begun to hang his arm around Sam's shoulders and all of the reaches that had been aborted at the last instant.

It was a bit easier to focus on that than to wonder why he was using the radio in the first place, and why Sideswipe was telling him to be careful, because Sunstreaker _wasn't_ shooting.

It really wasn't fair that Sam couldn't even be royally pissed at Sunstreaker for threatening to kill him because he might be in trouble _at this moment_. Of course, if he was in trouble, then Sideswipe did a damn good job of _not_ being worried, for the supposed _camaraderie_ they were supposed to have. Then again, maybe Sideswipe knew best, because they finally located Sunstreaker irritably doing _something_ to the cannon that had warped Sam's hood, and something about him suggested to Sam that he was muttering to himself, even if there wasn't any sound to be heard.

"_There_ you are," Sideswipe said brightly. He swiftly approached Sunstreaker, despite the evil glower and the warning hum of irritation, and Sam took a moment to realize that they really looked more alike than he had actually realized when he'd first seen them. It was true that Sunstreaker appeared more massive, at least to Sam, but that was due to the weapons attached to his back, peeking over his shoulder -- and he realized that their mass had actually been borrowed from what was already there. Sideswipe was a bit bulkier along his 'biceps' and back than Sunstreaker was, and he suspected that was where the components came from.

But then Sam, who had a unique insight into the human mind for a robotic life form, began to suspect _what_ was off with the situation. Although a part of him had wondered at the tiny Bobcat they'd passed on their way here, he had been so accustomed to construction vehicles being left overnight at the construction site that it took his programs a while to pull a 'hey, wait ...'. After all, this entire construction site had been abandoned for months, at least, and the Bobcat hadn't been _that_ dirty, and really, what use was a Bobcat at a site like this?

He hadn't even really thought about the dirty nondescript Volvo -- he didn't know how the geniuses at Volvo did it, coming up with a color that couldn't really be described as _anything_ -- even though he really should have. But what it was that really set his alarms off was the giant wheel of a farming tractor he could see peeking out from behind a pile of debris, and the barely recognizable grating of the front of a train from around a bit of building.

"Um," he said, looking around and taking in the form of a gardening tiller laying on it's side nearby, and a pair of yellow lights always attached to the roof of those county highway trucks that promised there was a truck beneath them. "Am I the only one that gets the feeling we're like ... _really_ surrounded?"

The two Autobots looked at him blankly, but like they were using that as a cue, all around the three of them things began to fall to pieces to rearrange themselves.

"Not just me?" Sam demanded loudly as his battle program didn't tell him anything he didn't already know, "oh, good!"

The Lamborghinis moved as one, but then with a mechanical shriek of challenge, the train came bursting out from behind his cover and jumped on them, and _wow_, Sam had forgotten that as big as they were, they were on the small side of Cybertronian height. He ducked under a flying limb and barely got a chance to transform his own cannon and shoot the garden tiller in the face, making it squeal as it fell back and forgot about trying to jump on him. Things inside his head were going into overdrive and it was all just _confusing the hell out of him_. He couldn't keep up with the programs and just about the time he was ready to react to something, his body already had and he couldn't even keep up with that --

A claw clamped around his ankle and jerked him off his feet, and he twisted and shot before he realized he'd fallen. Red coal eyes glowing, the Decepticon spat something and was climbing on top of him, stomping on his arm -- not even roughly, but more than enough that when he tried to shoot, instinctively, again, there was a bright flash of light and a brighter flash of agony, and the hot smell of melting metal. The Decepticons spat something at him, dragging him backwards. A white hot shot of plasma struck it making it wince and cower and spit something with flavors of pain and fear.

Then it began to _really_ drag Sam out of there.

"_Let go of me_!" he shouted, struggling. His free foot lashed out, and the clawed shape snagged on something on the Decepticon's arm and ripped a part of it off. It garbled something in surprise and fury, jerking Sam closer and stomping on his face a few times. Needless to say, what with his stupidly obvious weak spot, that was more than enough to discourage him from any further struggling. Not because he didn't _want_ to, because he was pretty sure that being dragged away by the enemy was a _bad_ thing, but because he _couldn't_.

One time, when he'd been trying to be an awesome skateboarding genius, he'd tried skateboarding down the railing in that awesome way. Instead, he'd slipped and fallen crotch first onto the railing, and proceeded to spend the next thirty minutes on the ground, rolling around and trying to avoid doing so in his own vomit. It was kind of like that.

His scrambled sensors were just coming back online in a coherent manner when he was dropped and released. Weakly, still not processing at his best, he tried to roll over and crawl away, only for the Decepticon to snarl and grab him again, manhandling him and slamming him into the ground. When he finally recovered from that, he decided to take a look around before he tried to escape.

He'd been left not far from the massive shape of another Cybertronian, probably Decepticon. The Decepticon that had dragged him away -- the Volvo? Were they _serious_? -- was digging around in the fallen one's chest. Actually, come to think of it, it looked a lot like this one didn't _have_ an alt form ... he was kind of shiny. And metal, with the swirls and symbols, a lot like Sam before he'd gotten his alt. It was clear from certain sounds the Volvo was making that he was bitching about something, probably _at_ the fallen Decepticon.

His body felt sluggish and unresponsive, like swimming through molasses, or the dreams he had when he was younger, trying to run away but somehow running in slow motion. But he _had_ to get out of here, and so he tried once again to escape, moving slowly to his side -- not slowly enough. With a sharp, irritated noise, the Decepticon returned to him and snagged him up roughly, dragging him closer to the big Decepticon and shoving him against the metal plates. Then he grabbed a handful of the mechanical miscellany on front of Sam's body and ripped.

Luckily, of the sensors that had come back online, _pain_ wasn't one of them, but it didn't stop the sudden screaming barrage of damage alerts that began to clutter up Sam's head. Panic forced his unwilling body to react to his hysterical demands, and he clawed at the Decepticon, but only weakly. The Volvo tossed the bits aside and grasped another handful of Sam, reaching up with his other hand to grab for his helmet, having clearly marked the weak point --

That was when a shrieking bot slammed into the Decepticon's head. The Volvo jerked back, cursing unmistakably no matter what language it was. The small bot -- the tiller, if Sam wasn't mistaken -- was trying to crawl away, whimpering, and then a large hand wrapped around the back of the Volvo's helmet and jerked the entire bot away from Sam. He got one good look at cold blue optics as the bot shot the tiller-bot before the Volvo shot at the large bot, shrieking. The mech jerked, then reacted with unforgiving intent, releasing the bot and kicking him.

A falling Cybertronian _did_ sound like a car crash, at least a little, Sam realized in dazed surprise. The large gunmetal gray mech with blue optics stomped down on the center of the Volvo's back, and he shot the Decepticon until the head severed from the body, then moved his foot -- a smooth boot shape -- and shot again a few times until there was burning hole in the back of the mech.

Sam got a startled second to realize that this mech had a configuration that was familiar -- or not really, but just like Bumblebee, his doors arched out proud and high from his back. In the dark gray, there was a slightly darker pattern -- _letters_, Sam realized, and then the few he could see made him squeak slightly.

_No way._ This mech had scanned an _under cover cop car_.

At the noise, the mech turned back to Sam, and his armor prickled under the scanners. Without a moment of hesitation, the mech aimed and shot -- and Sam was still wincing after he'd finished shooting, and he realized that the target had been the fallen Decepticon, not Sam at all. Then came the flash of knowledge -- _Autobot Prowl, Commander of Third, SIC_. And only because Sideswipe had been _so_ insistent did Sam ping back before he even realized that was what happened.

"You are not seriously damaged," the dark gray mech informed him, and it was ridiculous that a mech that was larger still than the two jerks had such a soft and mild (if masculine) voice. Sam had gotten so accustomed to Prime's grave rumble and Ironhide's stolen rasp and even the Lamborghini's brash snapping accents that it was just ... what? It was like the voice of every fictional computer ever, only male. "The counterparts are waiting; your absence has made them anxious."

'Anxious'? Sunstreaker and 'anxious' (at least, about _Sam_) didn't really go together. "Er," Sam said, moving only tentatively and failing horribly to get anywhere.

Prowl paused and turned back to scan him again. Finally, he said, "your receptors have taken superficial damage, and this has negatively impacted your software. You are not truly injured."

Sam stared at him for a moment. "Uh -- _excuse me_?" he demanded, struggling with his body, managing to actually make it a little further by leaning on the dead Cybertronian behind him. "You see those? Those over there? No, _look_, dammit -- you see those?"

Prowl observed the bits of mechanical miscellany, scanning them almost obligingly.

"Those right there? They're _supposed to be here_!" he snapped, grasping at his front where a few bits still dangled loosely from being ripped away.

The mech looked back at him, scanning the bits of Sam waving in the breeze. "You are not seriously injured," he decided, turning and stepping away.

Sam quivered in affront. "Hey, now, you just wait a moment!" he snapped, only to have Prowl's back continued to be presented to him, and _walking away_. "You -- hey -- what -- _oh, yeah_, well _forget_ you, too!"

Then it occurred to Sam that he had no idea where he was _or_ where the two jerks were, and that Prowl was just about his only way _back_, and he forced himself to his feet and ignored the flashing reproachful warnings of damage to follow after the large gray mech. Great. Not only was Sam accompanied by _two_ jerks, this Prowl Autobot seemed to be just as big of a jerk -- if not _bigger_. He reluctantly fell into step a few dozen feet behind him, trying to pull that 'I'm not following you, of course not' act that he'd seen people do before.

It didn't fool Prowl, of course. "The intention was to salvage the power cord that attaches your laser core to the rest of your body."

Sam was started by the sudden statement. "What?" he asked blankly, before he remembered he was trying to pretend that he had nothing to do with Prowl.

"Your spark resides in your laser core. It's attached to the rest of the body through a power cord ... I had nearly offlined Ransack by damaging the cord, but he and the others escaped. I am certain that Grease intended to replace that cord with your own." That said, Prowl glanced back cooly. "You are not seriously injured."

Well, hell, if Prowl's definition of _seriously injured_ was _dead_, then of course Sam wasn't seriously injured! What a jerk. He moodily tried to return his cannon to its more usual form, failed, and forgot about it. He wanted to have a word or two with the jerks -- ... and wow, what a way to feel stupid. How could he have possibly forgotten about using the damned _radio_ the entire time he was being attacked?

"(Is this Prowl guy _for real_?)" he demanded of both of them.

"(Unfortunately, yes,)" Sideswipe said in despair. "(We are _so dead ..._)"

When they finally met up with the other two, Sam was treated to no less than a full forty five minutes of Prowl towering over the two Lamborghinis (Sam got a kick out of that, since he was giving the jerks a taste of their own medicine ... even though Prowl was maybe only a handful of inches taller and much less impressively built) and whirling and clicking at them in a mild but stern way while Sideswipe protested vehemently, but was usually merely spoken over. The longer the tirade went on, the more backpedaling and cowering the two jerks seemed to do -- Sunstreaker under duress, certainly, though he never said a word. By the end, Prowl had his claws on his hip plates, and the jerks were huddled together like they were trying to have safety in numbers but had no illusions it would actually succeed at anything.

Prowl wrapped it up and merely stood there for a moment, regarding the two for a moment with no discernable expression. Then he took a deliberate step forward and snagged Sideswipe by the arm. Sideswipe gave an aborted squeak, began to protest, began to _struggle_ when Prowl grasped his roof plating that was stretched across his chest, and Sunstreaker winced as the red mech was suddenly twisted.

Sideswipe _howled_. To human ears, it might have sounded a bit like a gasp, but Sam had Cybertronian hearing now, and was treated to the full extent of the sound. It was over quickly, and then Sideswipe was left clicking a staccato message of clear reproach and ill temper. Prowl didn't even bother to acknowledge the complaints, observing the way Sideswipe gingerly moved his arm, and then continued to do so with more surety. As if satisfied, he turned a little bit to include Sam, and said, "shortly, the Fourth unit will arrive. We are to intercept."

"_The Fourth_?" Sideswipe echoed with even more dismay than before. "Primus, no -- there's got to be another way! You know, I tell you what, Prowl, we'll go on ahead with Boxy --"

"The child will not be leaving my vicinity," Prowl said, almost sharply.

"_Child_?" Sam echoed incredulously.

"Be silent," Prowl said, not acknowledging him further, optics fixed on the two jerks. "Without him to guide you, you have no reason to leave, either. We _will_ be intercepting the Fourth, and then we shall attempt to locate Optimus Prime."

Sideswipe looked like he had swallowed spoiled milk. He almost looked like he was going to give in before he leaned toward Prowl, making a noise that was nearly _plaintive_. "Com'n Prowl," he said quietly, and Sam watched in bewilderment as all of his programs agreed that Sideswipe was somehow attempting some kind of 'puppy face' -- only with his whole body, subtly shifting various parts of his armor in a way that made him look much less impressive -- much less _defended_. "You can't do this to us -- you know what's gonna happen ..."

Prowl stared down at the red mech. "Emotional appeals will not work on me, Sideswipe," he said flatly, sounding terribly unimpressed with the entire charade.

Clicking what was clearly a curse, even if Sam didn't understand it, Sideswipe's armor shifted back to it's normal configuration as he gestured toward the smallest bot in attendance. "What about the kid, then? You think _that's_ gonna turn out well, considering just how _glitched_ he is?"

"_Hey_!" Sam snapped, only to get waved quiet by a tense Sunstreaker.

For a moment, Prowl didn't respond. Then he said, "I am capable of repairing your shoulder, Sideswipe, but not his weapon. This incident of all should have taught you the dangers of the child being unarmed."

"And how _fragging_ conspicuous will we be, twelve of us traveling across this _backwards, technologically defunct_ planet?" Sideswipe protested.

"Much less so than we have been, before," Prowl said flatly. "This is not up for discussion, unless you wish to be brought before Prime for your insubordination." Sideswipe responded with an immediate negative, and Prowl acknowledged it; then he paused as if to consider his words before he said, "and it will not be that many of us." At that time, Prowl did some kind of strange _not_ping, and four strange little sets of data flashed across Sam's processor.

There wasn't a way to describe how the information was different from a ping, but if pressed, Sam would have said that there was a _color_ to the names and information he had gotten from the other mechs. But these four sets were unattached to any sort of file or anything in his processor, and set there like shortcuts on his 'desktop' to deleted programs, null and lifeless. Four sets of incomprehensible symbols, accompanied by vague descriptions. _Autobot, Autobot, Autobot, Autobot_. Dead.

Sideswipe and Sunstreaker fell silent, and even Sam winced a little, trying not to think about it. Unwillingly, he looked toward the star-spattered sky, revealed by their distance from the bright glare of city lights. An entire world at war, and there were always deaths ... the reports on the television about soldiers who had died in the Middle East, but the Cybertronians didn't even have that, scattered to the stars. Scattered to the -- Sam instinctively tried to squint, which didn't work at first, merely making strange things move on his face, but finally the stars sharpened and came into clearer focus. What the hell?

"The location we have chosen is across this country's boarder, in a few hours when the night is darker. Landing further away from civilization may inhibit our search for forms to camouflage ourselves with, but it will prevent undue attention."

"Well, good," Sideswipe said, not meaning it. "We're right on the edge of the boarder. What do we do until then, Prowl?"

"Actually," Sam said, looking across the night sky and seeing a sight he'd witnessed once before, "I think something must have gone wrong."

The other three turned, and they watched the sudden explosion of fire as no less than six objects entered the atmosphere, streaking across the sky and lighting it up like the forth of July. It was obvious to Sam that at least four of the landing aliens were chasing the one in front, while the sixth lagged behind and to the side, only to make an abrupt curve back toward the others, crossing half the sky. They flew overhead with the distant roar of jets, then streaked toward the ground in pursuit of the one in front.

Silence ruled between the four bots, even though Sam was wondering what the hold up was. Shouldn't they, uh ... be moving to intercept? Or, if the timing was wrong, then maybe this wasn't the 'Fourth' after all, and they were _Decepticons_. Which wasn't the most pleasant thought he'd had. He'd just barely survived his first skirmish because of Prowl's arrival and interference. _He couldn't even aim yet!_ Then again, maybe Cybertronians had some sort of weird cultural reaction to planetary landings ... he remembered Bumblebee taking him and Mikaela to watch Optimus Prime and the others enter the atmosphere, but had been reluctant to chase after the landing mechs.

"Communications?" Sideswipe demanded.

"Negative," Prowl said grimly. "They descended before I could transmit the coding that would accommodate this world."

"_Frag_."

"Let's haul tailpipe, Boxy," Sideswipe said, tone agreeing with his counterpart's brief curse. "That's forty miles, at least -- let's see if we can make it in fifteen minutes."

Prowl was the first to react, transforming with a sort of speed and efficiency that made every transformation Sam had seen before seem uselessly gaudy and needlessly elaborate. There was the mildest flash of blue and red from the front of the car before the headlights clicked on and Prowl took off with the minimum of scraping gravel. The two jerks were quick to follow, though Sideswipe gave one last tender wince of his shoulder, and Sam quickly followed suit. He was getting better already, though still not as fast as he'd like.

The counterparts kicked up quite a bit of dust as they took off, and half in offense and half just not wanting to be left in a Cybertronian graveyard, Sam quickly took off after them, catching up with a minimum of effort. It took him a moment to remember that they were ultimately trying to catch up with Prowl, since he had already gotten in the habit of just cruising with the Lamborghinis, but as soon as he did, he zipped ahead to catch up to the dark car.

Even having just met Prowl, who had adjusted to the whole situation with Sam a lot quicker than the jerks had, and nothing about the mech had suggested that he was the _bad_ sort ... there was just something menacing about the large darkly glittering vehicle. There was just something _slightly_ off about the mechanical noise he made as he mimicked an inanimate car, and the dull matte words that betrayed his 'true' identity stood stern. One thing was sure, Prowl was a hell of a lot more intimidating than any real life cop that Sam had met ... even considering that power crazy insane guy that had caught him in the junk yard.

Without even really meaning to, Sam swerved a little to the side, entering the other lane of traffic to give Prowl room, falling back from the side-by-side position he'd originally taken. This was, after all, the mech that had decided that just because Sam wasn't _dead_, he wasn't seriously injured ... although, come to think of it, Sam was actually doing pretty good compared to how he'd been doing when he _first_ met Prowl. All of his scanners had recovered from the painful blow to his head, and the blare of damage alerts was a mild reminder of the injury he carried on his under carriage and his arm, which ... was ... apparently part of the machinery wrapped around his engine, between it and the bumper.

The familiar rumble of engines brought him out of his contemplations of the impossibility of his own design, and he realized that he'd never leveled back up, since Sunstreaker was sliding by in the same lane Prowl was in, sixty feet in front of them.

"(Look sharp, Boxy,)" Sideswipe said, just as he bumped against Sam's bumper.

"(Hey!)" he yelped, horn barking in surprise. "(Whoa -- no, no, no! I don't know you that well -- what the hell are you _doing_ back there?)"

"(Sorry,)" he said, and he actually sounded like he meant it.

It certainly made Sam forget about his indignation. Instead, he picked the pace back up until he was next to Sunstreaker again, but Sideswipe stayed right there on his bumper. Hopefully, Cybertronian reaction time was better than human reaction time, or if Sam hit the brakes, they'd be in trouble. After a moment, he said, "(did you ... know any of the Autobots that were -- lost?)"

"(Yeah,)" Sideswipe said easily. "(Good bots, every last fragging one. Boxy -- when we meet up with the others ...)"

"( ... yeah?)"

"(If anyone even _looks_ at you cross eyed, we'll slagging _kill them_.)"

That part said, as one the two Lamborghinis moved, Sunstreaker pulling ahead and his counterpart sliding into that lane to follow suit. Which was fine with Sam, as he unintentionally let off his acceleration and fell further behind quicker than he normally would have. What the _hell_? It was hard to mistake the inflection as anything else but a fact stated with utter certainty. Although Sam had already unconsciously added the two to his mental list of mechanical guardians, he still was startled by the fact that they had taken the time to tell him such.

Then he thought to wonder what it could possibly be about the Fourth that made them think they had to _say something_ like that. He came to the determination that while he would rather not know, he'd probably find out shortly. _Fuck_.

Noticing that he was falling rather _drastically_ far behind, Sam picked up the pace once more, and this time actually took a moment to figure out just exactly how fast they were going. It was true that he was a little rusty on this driving thing after spending so long on a ship, but he thought they were going kinda -- _one hundred and twenty miles an hour_!

Things could be said for driving as late as they were, since robots apparently didn't have concerns about night and day but people did and therefore most of them were asleep -- but it also meant that there were cops out just laying in wait, in speed traps all around the place! "(Hey! Hey, hey, hey -- _whoa_, Sideswipe! Tell Prowl he's going too fast! Some cop's gonna stop us if we keep going this fast!)"

A second later, Sideswipe sent back: "(Relax, Boxy. Prowl has us covered -- besides, the landing is getting the fleshies all kinds of excited. There isn't going to be a cop left on traffic duty in the entire state!)"

Sam found that less than reassuring. "(Oh good -- so instead of chasing cars, they'll be chasing aliens. That's much better.)" He put on a little extra speed, swerving into the empty lane of traffic across the double yellow lines, bypassing the Lamborghinis. Ha -- even as a Mini Cooper, he was faster than them! He gloated on that briefly. Still, he probably wouldn't ever get used to this whole _chasebot_ thing.

The entire way from Maine to (the sign had informed him) Buffalo, they'd politely gone the speed limit, and he'd been pretty much okay. Now that they were pushing one-twenty all these weird programs had begun to flicker on and off all across Sam's processor. Maybe some of that could be blamed on his tension over the entire situation, but the fact remained that he was getting a little ... giddy.

"(Control yourself,)" Prowl's cool voice came in as Sam caught up to him. "(Excessive acceleration will only result in a collision; the humans have not configured Earth for the sort of terrine you were programmed for.)"

Sam had never known it was possible to _speak_ a semi-colon before. Prowl apparently was awesome enough that he could do so with ease. "(Yeah, yeah ... in case you missed the memo, I think I know that.)"

"(There is a difference between knowledge and _applied_ knowledge, child. Apply it.)"

"(Will you _stop calling me that_?)" he demanded irritably. "(I'm not a kid!)" Alright, alright ... really, Sam had never reached his eighteenth birthday, and so legally he was still a minor, but he wasn't a _child_. No one lived through what he did and could be called a _child_. He had been through too much _shit_ to deal with some robot from outer space calling him a _kid_.

"(You do not speak our language,)" Prowl said. "(None of the human languages have a word that approximates what you are in our culture. The closest is 'child'; I understand that you find this objectionable, but it is not entirely inaccurate.)"

"(Oh -- no, no, no. No, I don't think so,)" Sam said. "(I don't care, okay? _No_.)"

Prowl declined to respond to that in favor of coming to an abrupt and screeching halt, tires skidding across the pavement as his entire shape slipped sideways. Sam had to swerve in a nearly-suicidal manner to avoid slamming into the side of the car, his extra programs taking over so that he slid to a halt not far past the cop car, facing back the way he came and just in time to see the Lamborghinis come to a more graceful stop on the virtue of their forewarning. _Jerks_.

"(What the hell was that?)" he demanded as Prowl just sat there for a long moment while the others waited.

"(I believe that we have already surpassed their current location. Likely, they are in pursuit of the Unknown, who has gone for the highly populated city of 'Detroit' in an attempt to escape.)"

"(How do you know that?)" Sideswipe asked. "(I thought you couldn't communicate with them.)"

"(I cannot; however, there was a distress signal for a brief moment. We'll track them by the radiation from their entry into this atmosphere.)" Prowl turned back on the road, heading back with a sense of urgency that was actually _measurable_, instead of just trace -- haha. _Today will be Prowly, with traces of emotion throughout the mission..._ Sam sternly told his processor to shut up while he was busy sulking. He did _not_ appreciate that his sense of humor had a whole program all to itself, since he was discovering that it chimed in at inopportune moments. Not that this was really all that _different_, but it was more annoying.

Detroit proved to be insanely noisy and busy even at the time of night they were moving around at. There was a blinding amount of lights -- not that Sam had missed them when they'd nearly passed by, but now that they were headed into the busy city, he was wondering if they'd ever be able to track them. Sam took to ogling, since he doubted he'd have another reason to be in this thickly populated of a city ever again, being a giant robot alien. Three buildings towered up prominently -- the GM headquarters.

How ironic.

Much as Sam had noticed with Sideswipe and his tendency to wander dangerously close to the oncoming traffic lane, Prowl had this way of moving even on the manufactured set of wheels that really creepily reminded Sam of a large cat. He snaked around corners, avoiding pedestrians that were loitering and chattering about something strange they'd seen, complaining as their cell phones and cameras stopped working -- apparently for the second time, as a guy with a Nokia loudly complained.

"Largest G3 coverage in the country _my ass_," another spat.

It was obvious that _something_ had come this way. Sam stuck close to Prowl, even though the counterparts had split up to make themselves less conspicuous. Things got even more worrisome for Sam in a moment, though, when he realized that they were entering a part of the town under a brownout. It seemed that everything electronic had cut out, and it got more exclusive, and it made Sam very nervous -- anything that could completely cut out mechanical things, even like cars, could probably work the same way on _them_ now, and that was -- not even a thought he wanted to consider.

And in the center of this huge ring of _nothing_ was a large, circular building, and a place that would have been discrete if not for the neon glow of radiation fading around it was busted in. And the um -- wow.

There was a sudden -- _something_ that happened, and Sam was abruptly blinded. He had somehow managed to become accustomed to the strange way he had of perceiving the world, and it was all there one moment, the betraying glow of the fading radiation, and then that _something_ had happened and it was all _gone_. He could still hear the subtle purr of Prowl's engine nearby, but other than that -- the thing in his chest, somewhere in his engine compartment, tightened, and metal rasped against metal.

"It's nothing to worry about," Prowl informed him, speaking instead of using the radio -- for a reason, Sam realized, since that was _also_ gone. "I managed to scan the area before the pulse; it is safe to transform. Your optics will operate fine."

"What the hell _was_ that?" he demanded, even as he heard the hiss and whisper of gears as Prowl followed his own advice.

A moment later, he followed suit, while Prowl finished and said, "that was what you might refer to as an 'electromagnetic' pulse. Most of us are capable of producing it; I suspect I know who did, though I doubt he succeeded at what he wanted to do."

It was a relief to be able to see again, he realized as he made it standing. But he felt strangely -- naked, and vulnerable without most of his scanners working but having no immediate damage messages. Prowl began to stalk toward the building, and Sam quickly followed, if only because he was out in the open where anyone could see, and secondly because Prowl had proven himself an effective fighter and willing to defend Sam. Prowl ducked into the hole blown in the side of the building and Sam stared around, amazed and a little horrified at what he was seeing.

" ... _no fucking way_," he moaned. "They busted into the NAIAS?"

"What's that?" Sideswipe asked, startling Sam who hadn't even realized that the counterparts had shown up and walked up behind them. The two of them looked around and Sideswipe made an admiring noise. "Ooh, shiny."

It wasn't clear if he was talking about the new cars and concepts, or if he was talking about the _scorch marks_ and _blast radii_, because it was pretty damaged obvious that someone had a fight in here. "Oh my God -- what did they _do to the cars_?!" Sam demanded in dismay. Most of them were fine, if just a little dented or scorched or shoved off their pedestals -- but some of them had been sat upon or completely upended or -- "_Is that one cut in half_?!"

"Great. Just who I wanted to see," Sunstreaker said darkly.

"Yeah -- we know who did that. Wasn't part of the Fourth last time _I_ checked," Sideswipe said, casting a neon glower at Prowl.

Prowl finished cataloguing the damage and stepped forward calmly. "His entire division was wiped out when that asteroid struck the moon they were based on," he said. "Since we had lost --" and then he spat-crackled unintelligibly, "-- in the confusion, it was logical to add him to our ranks."

"You conniving _manipulative_ deceiving sunnuva_glitch_!" Sideswipe snarled.

"And you will not cause trouble for us, Sideswipe," Prowl returned, stopping to turn a sharp look on the red mech. "Especially not with the child present."

The two glowered rebelliously before glancing at each other. "Fine," Sideswipe snapped, clearly so beyond being unhappy it wasn't even funny. "_If_ the glitch behaves."

Well. Good. Sam was glad they'd gotten that sorted out -- but the _cars_. Oooh, the cars ... the humans _weren't_ going to be happy about this, and he suspected that the government would be even less so. "What is _wrong_ with you guys?" he moaned to himself, "arriving at _car shows_?"

"Hey," Sideswipe said mildly, "I'll have you know that _no one_ noticed us."

"That would be a first," Prowl said.

The two counterparts clicked, staring at the taller dark gray bot in floored surprise. "Oh Primus -- did Prowl just make a _joke_?" Sideswipe demanded, looking to his yellow companion for confirmation.

"Merely stating a fact," he said, pausing to look back at them with disapproval. "Now, everyone ... be careful. That pulse was close enough that unless they created _another_ exit, at least the commander of the Fourth is in this building, which means that the Unknown they were pursing is _also_ inside this building. We are currently blocking the only known exit."

"We should send Boxy to scout," the red mech volunteered.

"_What_?" Sam demanded. "What? What? _No_ -- no, I know I didn't just hear you suggest you send _me_ out there! No, no, no!"

Prowl turned to regard Sam gravely. "That is not entirely strategically unsound ... you are not of the shape or size to be mistaken for the Unknown, and your configuration is clearly indicative of your function class, which most mechs default to Autobot status ... as it is, you are in danger here, being the weak link in our defense of the exit."

"I can wait outside," he said, gesturing toward the hole and making a few steps toward it.

"If you wish to not be considered a 'child'," Prowl said, "you would scout this area. You have a greater knowledge of human reasoning than we do -- you should be able to spot when our camouflaging fails."

Sam stared at the large gray bot. "I hate you," he informed the mech, "so, _so_ much." He glanced back at the shadowed and destroyed interior of the NAIAS, wincing reflexively when a sign indicating the location of the Kia cars fell from the ceiling with a crash. Now that he no longer had his scanners, he was really not feeling this whole _investigating_ thing. He looked back at the Autobots, but they just stood there like silent mechanical statues, staring at him, and so he threw up his claws and stepped away from the hole.

Not that he had any idea how his supposedly 'superior' knowledge of human logic was really going to help him here, when whoever had come through the building had a huge party-fight-thing and messed up _all_ of the displays. Although his optics still cut easily through the shadows and gloom of the unlit building, even struck as it was by the occasional sparking from bared circuitry, it was still amazingly creepy. That and he'd never been to a car show, so he was kind of alternatively getting distracted with all of the new and _shiny_ cars that looked pretty spiffy, and he didn't know _how_ they worked, so what would be conspicuous? The people had just dropped their cars pretty much wherever there was room to park. Or at least it seemed that way to _Sam_.

Nothing was looking too conspicuous, Sam realized with dismay. He glanced about, realizing that he'd entered 'killer awesome concept' land. He looked around skeptically. Surely no robot alien would choose one of these ... any of the cars, really, in the Auto show would fail completely to make a good cover, but he was starting to think it was an Autobot failing.

Oh, sure, there were _Camaros_ and big rigs and trucks, but none of the Autobots had chosen an even vaguely _common_ car. Then again, neither had Sam, really. He'd seen maybe one real Mini since he'd first taken the form.

And that was about when programs activated in his processor and began to slice all of the cars he was seeing into pieces, panels and carriages and glass and the shape and the size and the mechanics underneath and -- Sam jerked his head, clearing his optics in startled surprise. He thought that when all of his scanners had shut down, _that_ one should have definitely -- why hadn't it? Hell, he hadn't even _thought_ about it since he'd used it the first time, and once more only briefly when he had set his tires to American asphalt. Now was not the time to be distracted, though. The last thing he really needed was to be attacked by another Decepticon looking for parts to heal up his buddy while his processor was distracted. If they were leaving, like ... cosmic radiation of the edges of the building, then they should still have some on them. Though it was true that the trampling of radiation right inside the hole had already been fading to nearly nothing by the time they'd arrived.

He carefully stepped over the twisted remnants of a blue car, resting his claw briefly on another nearby -- and took all of two steps before something registered as _wrong_. It took him a split second to realize that the shape of the bits of blue car matched the one he'd braced himself against _exactly_ -- and he'd know, the way his programs kept analyzing car after car (_inapplicable, inapplicable, inapplicable_). He turned back around, looking at the pieces of the car scattered across the ground, then at the blue car. They were the exact same shade of ridiculously vibrant blue, with the same silver side view mirrors.

It was also a Chevy, like Bumblebee. Sam briefly wondered if there was something about the Chevrolet symbol that appealed to some Cybertronians, or if it was merely coincidence.

With another look at the pieces on the ground, Sam finally figured out that it hadn't been that the Cybertronian had been discovered and sliced to pieces, like whoever it was the counterparts were dreading to see, but that the car had been destroyed -- possibly after the mech had scanned it. Sam's programs had made a credible effort to fit all of the pieces back together from the chunks on the ground, but it wasn't until he shifted his attention to the car that they really came together smoothly. Which just left the question of -- if the car that Sam had touched was a Cybertronian, then why had he gotten away with touching it in the first place?

Now was _such_ a sucky time to have his radio be out. He knew from earlier that the Cybertronian himself had to have very little idea of what was going on outside, but had to know that Sam was present since he wasn't exactly _quiet_ and that Sam had _touched_ him.

"So," Sam said, "uh ... I don't guess you speak English, huh?"

The blue car refused to react to his intelligent question. After all, if Prowl still hadn't ... done whatever he needed to do to establish communications with the team, what were the chances that they had gotten around to learning English? Sam looked around helplessly -- so he probably found one of the Cybertronians, but he had no way of telling if it was an Autobot, or if it was this 'unknown' that Prowl was talking about, and he had no way of contacting the others without going to speak to them directly ...

And actually, he might have found more than just one of them. Last time he checked, Audis were not supposed to be in the Chevrolet section of the auto show. And he didn't even know what the hell that huge silver thing was, but it certainly didn't look like it was supposed to be where it was, being neither a Chevy or Audi or '_Das Auto_', as they were also near the VW section of the exhibit.

"You guys suck so much at hiding," he muttered. At least they had chosen a sort of ... truck stop this time, instead of someone's backyard, though. He made his way toward the further car, the huge silver thing -- which, by the way, was never going to blend in anywhere _ever_. Once they were in California, there was some small chance that no one would focus _too_ much on the Lamborghini jerks, but _this_ thing ... would _always_ be conspicuous. Forever. It belonged in a movie about -- _Ironman_, or something, it was so ridiculous.

Sam didn't even realize he'd made a mistake by approaching the silver car until he was knocked skidding back into another car hard enough to nearly shove it onto it's side. Thankfully, he'd done so back-first and was therefore mostly still coherent enough to scramble up and over the vehicle while the two other robots transformed and leapt onto the silver vehicle. Sam winced and ducked as a bit of mechanical miscellany went sailing overhead, and flattened himself to the ground, scrambling for cover.

He barely had warning enough to throw himself to the side and roll out of the way before a loudly clicking large silver bot tore by, with either arms as long as a freaking _monkey's_ or something else. This was getting _way_ too exciting for Sam's tastes, and he winced as a car went tumbling hood over tailpipe not ten feet away from him. _Christ_. Why was it when giant robot aliens got into a fight, they so effectively destroyed the entire area with big boom?

There really should be a noise to accompany that pulse, Sam decided as another one washed over him in an almost _physical_ way, momentarily scrambling _everything_ before his more basic sensors came back online. Then it was followed by one of the more concussive explosions Sam had been in a position to endure. Something large slammed into his back and slammed him into a hard, unyielding surface. It would have knocked the breath out of him if he had anything to breathe with. Instead, he just grasped weakly at the car he was wedged against, claws scrapping the nice, shiny paint job.

Aware of a lapse in the fighting behind him, he struggled to escape from the two cars he was stuck between, shoving at first one, then the other, before his brain caught up with his actions and he remembered to push at both at the same time. The rubber of the tires resisted for a moment, but he finally managed to get them to scoot apart enough for him to wiggle out of the huge dent he'd made in the side of the vehicle. Parts of his armor had actually torn into the side of the car, and as he pulled away, it continued to rip through it like the time he'd caught his finger in a hole in his favorite t-shirt and ripped the entire thing in half on accident.

Wow. Maybe Bumblebee wasn't kidding when he said that it would take a hell of a lot to damage Cybertronian armor. What in the hell was he _made of_?

Then the shooting started again and Sam figured he'd worry about it when there wasn't firepower being aimed carelessly that was _meant_ to chew through whatever he was made of, and he decided that the exit or at least being around the counterparts sounded like a bang-up idea. Especially what with the light show going on back from where the other robots were.

And he had somehow actually managed to get _lost_ in the dome. It was official -- Sam was life's favorite punching bag. _No way out, no way out, no way out_, his processor gibbered, like a separate panicking thing from the cold and thoughtless Sam in his head, his body moving in aimless jerking directions like it was physically looking for an escape that _was not there_. A hot blast of blue seared not centimeters from his head, blistering the paint or maybe just freezing it, and that gibbering repetition took a more hysterical edge and suddenly he was transforming.

_Oh, right_, that cool thoughtless Sam in his head realized; it was easy to forget in the face of the Cybertronian's calm friendliness and their insanely violent battles, but the core coding said to _blend in_. He couldn't run, so he'd _hide_. He landed on his wheels, blind to the world again but with ever byte of processing power bent to analyzing the sounds of what was going on.

Not that he had to try very hard. The fighting was pretty loud.

There was another one of those horrifically concussive explosions, and Sam's suspensions tightened as the car he'd dented and then royally destroyed slid over to hit him relatively gently, skewing his position. Then all of the whirling and clicking in the distance took on a more outraged tone.

It was probably only the fact that Sam was currently pretending to be a car and his scanners were completely offline and he was reduced to one sensor only that he even noticed the fact that there was the slightest tinking, and a nearly silent noise of gears. It was so quiet that it could have easily been his imagination. From what he remembered of the auto show, there wasn't really much way that a mech could hide while moving.

But just in case, Sam continued to sit silent and still. The outraged clicking took on a more puzzled tone just before there was a short sound of a distant clash between metal and a third pulse swept over Sam. All of the Cybertronians made some alarmed comments and a whole herd of gears rushed by Sam.

He was probably safe to transform and follow, but ... they'd just been in a fight, and it sounded a little like the guy they were fighting escaped, and Sam didn't really want to show up unexpected while being unable to speak their language or 'ping', since Sideswipe had hammered that into his processor through being a mixture of psychotic and persistent. Sooner or later, Sideswipe or Prowl would remember him and come find him, but until then ... Sam would just chill right here. Not that he thought he could chill there indefinitely -- he most probably definitely wasn't of the model of any of the BMWs here, if there were any. There probably were. But he had a busted headlight, still, and some superficial heat damage under his hood, and he wouldn't blend in with his dusty body and -- well, also the fact that everything was blown to smithereens. He wasn't sure of the exact date that the NAIAS went on exhibit (or dates, maybe), but the Autobots had probably just crashed the party.

Sam spared the though enough of his memory space to momentarily wonder if the government would make the Autobots stand in for the cars that had been trashed. The blue one, at least, would need to be replaced, as well as whatever it was that Sam had been blown into and then shredded on accident.

Apparently, that was time enough for the others to take stock and realize that Sam was missing, because he heard his nickname go bouncing and echoing through the dome. Like he was some kind of willful pet that had run off. That alone was enough to make him sit there for a moment longer, fuming for a second while tracking all three of the others progression. Sideswipe was the only one actually saying anything, so Sam had to guess that it was Sunstreaker that wasn't _too_ far off, but judging from the sound ... it was Sideswipe who was quickly nearing his 'hiding' place, and therefore all of his willfulness was for nothing. Sam sat there, resigned to his fate.

Up until Sideswipe walked _pass_ him, saying, "hey, Boxy, you can come out now ... where in the frag did you _hide_? Even a bot _your_ size ..."

"I'm right here," he said, a little worried about Sideswipe. After all, he'd taken a pretty rough blow to the processor, and then Prowl fixed his shoulder in a none-too-gentle manner, and ... yeah, Sam had realized that Sideswipe was _already_ a little ... _off_, but ... if there was something seriously wrong with him ...

Sideswipe circled around back as the other two came there direction, drawn by Sam's voice. However, the red mech paused just five feet away -- give or take a meter. Sam wasn't sure about this measuring distances thing through his hearing. "Where?" Sideswipe queried, sounding baffled and slightly amused, like they were playing hide and seek.

Freakishly enough, that strange quiet noise that Sam felt more than heard because it was that deep seemed to trigger some kind of thing inside of him, so that he was becoming equally amused. "Here," he said. "Polo. _Polo_, dammit, Sideswipe. Polo-polo-polo --"

"Is that _you,_ Boxy?"

Sam didn't respond for a moment, still slightly freaked out by his body. Every time he got used to it, it did something else that was just -- no. His body came with all of the basic programming that decoded all the multitudes of sounds that a Cybertronian produced, and he had caught onto the fact that sometimes he became his own one-man percussion-band, and he was kind of relieved that he didn't have to _learn_ what each sound meant, or he'd never get around to telling the difference between Sideswipe's mad-hatter smile and the sheer disbelief he was exuding at the moment.

"What?" he asked in alarm. "What's wrong? What happened -- did I get _shot_? _Oh my God, am I okay_?!"

"You are not damaged," Prowl said as he arrived.

"Except for those red streaks," Sunstreaker said, "_and now_, you will come to understand what is so _irritating_ about _paint streaks_."

"I think that's just you, 'Streaker," Sideswipe said with amusement, having recovered from his shock. He took a step toward Sam and patted his roof. "Boxy, you switched alts on us."

Ignoring the fact that he'd just gotten petted like a dog, _what_? "What?"

"Much better," he added helpfully. "Not nearly as awesome as _my_ alt, of course, but it's better than what you _were_."

"I disagree," Prowl said, sounding dissatisfied. "While conspicuous to an extent, the child's previous form would at least draw much less attention than this will."

"Oh God," Sam said, "what in the hell did I turn into?"

"Check your specs, genius," Sunstreaker said.

It took Sam a moment to remember what he was talking about, since he hadn't had to struggle with the transformation the way he had when he was trying to do it for the first time. The scanning program x-rayed a vehicle, and then created a three-dimensional representation inside his processor, which could be induced to show his own transformation in a way. More importantly -- Sam had apparently scanned the vehicle he'd been smacked into and sandwiched against, and gored out it's side due to the spikes of his own harder-than-earth-metal armor. And Prowl was so absolutely completely correct -- Minis were noticeable, but Sam had scanned something that was a _freaking concept car_.

_Fucking fuck_.

Never mind the fact that it was _orange_, which was a color that Sam had always gone to great lengths to avoid wearing -- the car was too obviously a sports car, two-seater, stick-shift, and _curved_. The first thing Sam said was, "does this mean you won't call me 'Boxy' anymore?"

"You have to _ask_?"

Sam took that as a '_no'_.

"We should leave," Prowl said. "The others have already gone ahead to a rendezvous outside of the city. One of their number is missing, and it's imperative that we locate him as soon as possible."

"What about that unknown guy?" Sam asked.

Prowl's engine growled a little. "Impossible to track with our current capabilities. The radiation has already disappeared, thanks to our repair systems, and with the sort of modifications that he had ... no, currently we are incapable of tracking him. Which is why we should retrieve the Fourth's missing number as quickly as we can."

"So ... he's some kind of bad ass, huh? The unknown, I mean."

"Hey," Sideswipe said, "you don't need to sound so interested."

Sam realized that he _did_ sound interested -- but _damn_. Anyone who could slip pass _everyone_ had to be a bad ass, right?

"Come," Prowl said, uninterested in whether Sam was impressed or not. "The sooner we leave, the better. Our luck will not hold."

With a careful twist of will, Sam triggered his transformation, feeling the entirely more spacy shell fall out of place and then kick into gear, whirling and shifting as he forced himself to his feet. The weird thing about it, that the best coherent way that the human mind could come up with explaining a transformation: that the car '_just stood up'_ -- was almost entirely accurate. It was a lot like _just standing up_.

And Sam had changed his configuration. Whether it was because the spacer shell had allowed him to fold differently and therefore cut the shell apart differently, or simply because being a car that drastically different meant that he'd just _look_ that drastically different, it was a good thing he hadn't tried to approach anyone unaware. Besides softening all the edges of his armor, he had somehow changed so that there were _more_ spikes -- and those two concepts shouldn't go together, but it was true. And ... and he didn't look like a good mimic of the car he'd scanned, either -- he'd stolen bits and pieces of the other cars to replace things he supposed wasn't worth the work of replicating. Sam sagged a little, embarrassed. He felt _ridiculous_ -- or worse, like an idiot. On some level, he'd made the connection that he was about to be a Mini cooper surrounded by alt forms collected from _The_ auto show of America, but ...

Sideswipe was clicking at him in high humor, but Sunstreaker and Prowl had no time for snide remarks about ego and Sam's self-depreciation. Prowl turned back and began to stalk toward the hole that had been busted into the wall, the two Lamborghini jerks moving as one to follow. Sam fell in behind, still self-conscious about his new shape; the fun, it seemed, _never_ ended.

"When does that pulse thing wear off?" he asked; even being back with the others and knowing that there were no strangers hiding among the cars, it still grated his nerves not to be able to scan his surroundings. Sam actually felt _vulnerable_, not being able to sense the way that had freaked him out at first. Who knew?

"In a few hours," Prowl said. "Until then, we shall simply have to deal with being observed together."

"Aw," Sideswipe crooned, "Prowly, come on -- you love us, admit it."

"I am not so enamored with your company that I would risk exposure for it," he said dryly. "There is simply no other choice with our communications disabled."

"You could let us go with Boxy and --"

"_No_, Sideswipe. I have made my stance on that clear -- and at this rate, I am not feeling the least bit inclined to allow you two out of my sensor range. I did not think it was possible for the two of you to become even _worse_, but apparently I was wrong."

"Hey, 'Streaker -- get a load of this! _Prowl admitted he was wrong about something_."

"Shut up, Sideswipe."

-+-

The four of them were in a spot of trouble. Sam was beginning to realize, however, that he had become well accustomed to being in impossible situations, and the bemused murmuring all three aliens engaged in for a moment as if sharing despairing looks indicated to that alien part of him that they, too, were well accustomed to being in such impossible situations.

They had escaped the dome without too much issue, dodging the people finally swarming to the scene of the shiny explosions with relative ease. 'Stealthing', as Sideswipe put it, didn't come to Sam easily since he lacked the years of battle the three Autobots had spent dodging Decepticons, but he managed a much better job of it than he had the first time he'd wandered into a town in his shiny new robot body. After all, he'd been living as one for roughly three months now and had spent that time being taught by Sideswipe -- who, while not great at stealthing himself, was at least well acquainted with ambushing, which was something like it.

Sam was slightly impressed that Sideswipe had enough of an attention span that he thought ambushing would take, but considering that Sideswipe had entertained himself by rocking the ship violently for _four hours straight_, he supposed anything was possible.

The fact remained that they were mostly depending on the virtue of _luck_ to remain unseen by the humans because Sam had suddenly reminded them all that with their total lack of scanners meant that not only could they not _see_ in car mode, but they didn't have any way of navigating easily, and no one seemed too interested on attempting it by purely listening.

"So, wait," Sam whispered as they all hugged the side of a building, "how did the _others_ get away?"

"At that time, the humans were still distracted with their 'technical difficulties'," Prowl said, sounding aggrieved by their luck. "But enough time has passed that they are looking for alternative entertainment."

What a way to say that people watched too much television and surfed too much Internet.

" ... I could bomb the dome," Sideswipe offered helpfully.

"You could," Prowl said, leaning around Sam to click a negative straight into Sideswipe's faceplates, "but if you did, then I would be forced to report it to _Prime_."

"Whoop-de-freakin'-do," the red mech scoffed. "What do I care about Prime?"

"Prime can -- and _will_ -- order Ratchet to disable your weapons and ground you from any skirmishes."

"On the other hand," Sideswipe said, gesturing as if to illustrate the phrase, "I'm sure your superior tactical genius can discover another way out of this. We'll only blow up the building as a last resort!"

"Shut _up_, Sideswipe," Sunstreaker said, which was starting to sound like a mantra as he shoved his counterpart closer to the wall.

Prowl complied with the implied reprimand and leaned back himself. Although hugging the side of a building didn't really do much toward their ability to hide, especially considering that three of them were all on the more -- _vibrant_ stretch of the rainbow, leaning out really didn't help. After another second, he said, "I am attempting to write a program code that will temporarily reorder our audials programs into something similar to sonar, using the sound of our motors -- or if it comes to it, our ER transmitters."

"Oh boy," Sideswipe said, sharing a wary murmur with Sunstreaker. Prowl did not seem impressed with this display.

"What?" Sam asked guardedly.

"On occasion," Prowl said stiffly, "though a bit of programming code will work for many of the Autobots, when I attempt to utilize it ... my data analyzers discover that it shouldn't work, and therefore it does not."

"Same way he has a hard time writing his own codes," Sideswipe whispered even quieter, as if that affected whether or not Prowl could hear him.

"Then why is _he_ the one doing it?" he asked in bewilderment. "Why don't _you_ do it?"

Sunstreaker's engine made this weird ... bark-like noise, like some kind of mechanical snort. "The _last_ time Sideswipe tried to write a bit of code, he ended up making his paint nanites change color in a very distracting way."

"I _told_ you not to talk about that!" the red mech snapped with agitation.

"And I suppose you're just as bad," Sam sighed. "Great."

"Your confidence is overwhelming," Prowl said darkly.

Sam winced, feeling those swiveling things on either side of his helmet rotate downwards (he hated it, since it enhanced the feeling that he was just a _pet_ to the Lamborghini jerks sometimes, but it was completely out of his control. Not even spending an entire waking cycle trying to locate the program had revealed what it was that controlled them).

He wasn't exactly what people called the most empathetic person ever -- or maybe that was not entirely correct. He remembered his teacher, once, in Sophomore year, who had called him on his sociopathic tendencies -- his ability to perceive motivation and pride and _weakness_ and exploit it to achieve his own means. At the time, he thought that she was giving him too much credit -- projecting other issues on him, somehow. But that feeling of being _different_, of being _separate_ from the rest of humanity, that feeling he tried to mask by _making_ people let him have his _normal_ life, that had become _so sharp_ one dark night that he'd been kidnapped by secret government sectors ... it wasn't as bad with the Cybertronians.

Maybe because it was a bit because of that thing that Bumblebee had said -- pointing out their vastly different expectations for life. That a human would search for a mate, have children, and die -- while a Cybertronian would live on. And on. And on.

For a moment, Sam forgot where he was at and with who when he suddenly and _finally_ realized just what it meant, that he had become a Cybertronian. What it _meant_ beyond the fact that he had this _power_ hiding behind him, what it _meant_ beyond the strange processes in his head and the way his body moved. It was a bad time to _finally_ realize that he would live on. And on. And on. And while Bumblebee had not seemed perturbed by the idea that Sam would be one of them, the anxiety hit him rather suddenly over how he _would_ react. Sam made a decent human, but he failed completely at this whole Cybertronian thing, and _what would Bumblebee think about that?_

Miles wouldn't care -- he would think it was awesome that Sam was a robot at all, he knew that. Mikaela -- when he finally got a chance to _tell_ her, to _let her know who he was_, assuming that the others hadn't revealed what was happening to him first, she would eventually accept him. She'd make fun of his complete and utter failure at most things, and he'd probably turn into her _chauffeur_, but whatever; it would be fine with Sam. But at the same time, Bumblebee ...

It wasn't that he thought that Bumblebee would react ... _badly_. It was -- ... just ... He didn't want to be -- quite so _dorky_ as he suspected he was, compared to the others -- sure, Bumblebee probably didn't expect -- wouldn't expect -- him to be some kind of _expert_, but Sam _wanted_ to be -- ... he kind of really, really wanted to be good at what he was. Because he really, _really_ wanted to impress Bumblebee. Kind of _a lot_. Because he kind of really, _really_ liked his car.

Or it really wasn't accurate to say that Bumblebee was his car, but it still sounded right in his head. It sounded a lot safer than what he was trying not to suspect was going on in his head. That really weird Preoccupation Thing.

"Alright," Prowl said, unknowingly saving Sam from the Things He'd Rather Not Think About. "I think I've managed to write a code even you three can use."

Never mind, Sam took back what he said about being sad he hurt Prowl's feelings. Prowl didn't have feelings -- he was a jerk.

"Great," Sideswipe said, not sounding enthused as he reached over Sam's head. Sam jerked and crouched reflexively, having learned over weeks to be wary of things near his spikes, but Sideswipe was only holding out his claw to Prowl. Prowl reached back, and it was a total _ET_ moment; the tips of their claws touched only briefly, a small flare of light that Sam's programs informed him was not on a human's visible spectrum, and then Sideswipe was turning to Sunstreaker who already had his claw up.

What. The. Fuck.

He looked back around to Prowl, who still had his claw extended. "I don't know how to do that," he said dumbly.

Prowl hesitated, only the slightest fraction of a millimeter giving away his uncertainty. "The purpose of this," he said, twitching his claw more noticeably, "is only to establish a hard link, as all free link communication and applications have been disabled. The transfer should work as usual after that."

"I don't think you get it," Sam said, "I've never _transferred_ anything."

"Here, Boxy," Sideswipe said, "like this."

He jabbed his claw into Sam's arm again, causing Sam to jerk in surprise and leap sideways -- straight into Prowl, who recoiled as well. It was fortunate that data transfer was much quicker than even Sam's speedy processor could move his body, because there was only a brief after-sensation of the ice-cube-down-his-back, and he had a neatly packaged data bundle sitting there in what appeared to be his 'in-box'.

Prowl pushed Sam away from him -- gently, though, not the way Sam had witness the bigger Autobots shove each other -- and Sam retaliated against Sideswipe by shoving him as hard as he could, nearly managing to do something except that Sideswipe had braced himself. He settled for hitting him rather roughly on his chest, scratching the paint on the broadest bit of armor. Sideswipe was far from impressed, humming with amusement.

"Enough," Prowl said sharply when Sam was disinclined to accept defeat. "We should make our escape as quickly as possible, without drawing undue attention. I will go first, you three will follow."

"Yeah, that'll work out great. Hey, Sideswipe, you wanna go first in line? That way if the program goes out, _you_ can crash into his bumper," Sam said, looking up at the red mech.

Sideswipe clicked a few times in amusement, but held up his claws in a warding gesture. "I'll have to say _no_," he said.

"You don't trust me," Prowl said with evident frustration.

Sam was relatively surprised to turn and find Prowl aiming this grievance at _him_. "No," he denied reflexively, but then found it true. "What you're seeing right here? This is me not _liking_ you -- there's a difference. You're a jerk."

"Don't take it personally Prowl," Sideswipe said, "he calls us that, too."

Prowl stared at the two of them, making a slight unintelligible noise when Sunstreaker indicated it was true. "I do not appreciate being compared to those two," he informed Sam darkly. "For your information, my personality matrix is both more complex and advanced than theirs is required to be by default of their function class. Furthermore, my data analyzers are three versions more recent, with patches and bug fixes that most mechs could only wish for. I am _more_ than apt for this mission." That said, he turned away to stalk a short distance from the wall and transform.

" ... did _Prowl_ just insult us?" Sunstreaker inquired, since his counterpart and Sam seemed to be at a loss for words.

It was just Sam's luck to not only be stuck with two jerks, but a snobby _prima donna_.

* * *

- Re: Sam's hood 'popping'. Sufficiently advanced science is indistinguishable from magic! Or, all of the nanites that make Sam's armor all shifted at pretty much the same time. Which reminds me, can anyone imagine how badly Sam will freak out if he learns that he's actually not one robot, but an entire universe of robots working together with a hive mind that calls itself 'Sam'? Quite a lot, if you ask me.

- AHAHAHA~ yes. And now I want to have the 'Con Doctor, who I finally caught onto being MovieVerse!Perceptor the second time I watched the movie. And if he's not, he did a damned good job stealing Evil!Perceptor's place, what with being a microscope and wanting samples of Sam's brain. Or maybe a zombie, come to think of it ... a vampire zombie. Yes.

And did you just see 09!Sideswipe referenced? YES. And yes, he will be coexisting with Real!Sideswipe. A skaterbot by any other name would stab just the same~

- RE: getting Alts at the NAIAS: Yeah, I know that's supremely counterproductive to hiding to become a bunch of ridiculous alts, but considering that the alts of the first movie were pretty unbelievable for various reasons (LOOKIN AT YOU, BUMBLEBEE!), I caved into my natural inclination to give distinctive cars as alts. But these are the same robots that thought hiding was turning Sam's backyard into a truck stop. Yes. (Actually, the real hand wave is this: The culture that gave rise to the Autobots slayed their natural predators a _long_ time ago, and pretty much stayed civilized after that, meaning that their engineers and programmers never made a big effort to preserve their survival protocols -- therefore, Autobots fail at hiding most of the time, whereas the Decepticons ... not so much.)

Speaking of alts: after I realized it was dumb to have Hot Rod the sports car be only a foot shorter than Ratchet the Rescue Hummer, I reimagined everyone, and apparently the Autobots are Really. Really Short. As in Ironhide, Prime, and Ratchet being the exception, rather than the rule. Like ... the Autobots are an army-of-angry-midgets short.

- I'm gonna try RLY RLY hard not to do any funfun reveals in replies to reviewers anymore, you guys. TRY, I said! I used to be able to play coy! Now if you just ask, chances are I just tell ... I must resist the urge.


	18. Witwicky Lives

Although I know I suck cos I left you guys hanging for a long time ... I wrote this chapter through the flu. So if it makes any sense at all, you are probably as hyped up on cold medication as me.

On that note, I still managed to do some research, and discovered that Rotf!Sideswipe is the same height as Sambot. Who knew? However, when I tried to scale the Corvette Stingray into my homebrewed size conversions, it actually just places him just inches behind Jolt. Which, from what I can _roughly_ see, he's actually like a foot behind. WHATEVER. Inaccuracies abound. Business as usual.

Also, I might have lied about that whole thing with the 'ROTF not included'. Because with each viewing of RotF, I like it more. But still. No sunharvester for you.

* * *

**Chapter Sixteen: Witwicky Lives**  
"Prowl," he said sharply, "you and I are going to have a conversation about asking questions you don't really want to know the answer to. _Soon_."

-+-

Will tried really hard not to stagger as he made his way through the doorway into the hanger where the Autobots were gathered. There was just enough noise that he was having a hard time hearing himself think, which really didn't mean anything since he was pretty sure he wasn't thinking _anything_ other than 'oh God'. Two dozen of his own men were all carrying on excited conversations, and three of the attendant giant alien robots were conversing loudly enough. The rest of them at least had the decency to keep it to their silence channels.

"Alright," he shouted over the general murmur, cutting through it with ease. "Let's get this briefing over with."

Although, if you asked him and any of his men, it was entirely too fucking early to be dealing with this shit ... even if it was about ten after four this time, and not _three_. Will had this wacky idea that the alien robots were probably all night owls after all of these months of living together, because even if he saw them around during the day they only seemed to get really active during the night. Also, it never seemed to fail that they entered the fucking atmosphere at night. Which, considering the few entries he'd witnessed, made sense at least a little. It wasn't exactly a subtle affair, even if they were pretty fast at it.

It didn't hurt that the government had kind of bribed the astronomers with extended funds to say that yeah, there were a lot of meteors recently. The news reported that scientists said it was debris from a planet that had been ripped apart. Which -- god -- while accurate, was somehow horribly embarrassing.

(_"It's true," Ironhide said blankly, as if he'd been caught off guard by Will's awkward mention of the subject._

_"Yes," Optimus agreed guilelessly, the quiet churning of gears and machinery whispering through his frame as he lifted his head briefly to look up toward the sky and the stars. "I believe this is what you humans would call a coincidence. We could be considered debris from our fallen world." He'd looked down, the glaring blue lights glancing at Will and Epps and the men who'd followed them out to the leader of the Autobots. "Has something come up, William Lennox?"_)

He found himself glancing at the unfolding figure of Optimus Prime, and tried to shake off that _almost_ feeling that had been creeping up on him ever since news of that report had reached him (and a part of him wondered: _was this what being Sam Witwicky had felt like_?). Looking around, he finally spotted the burnt orange mustang with the tricked out sound system. "Blaster," he called, "you go the intel, right? Let's see it."

The mustang jerked a little, then unfolded in a swift and choppy manner. Blaster's transformation was a little different from the average Autobot, although Will couldn't remember who it was that had explained why, or that _why_ for that matter. "Here we go," Blaster said, straightening, and the image was suddenly projected into the air in front of them. "So, everything was as quiet as normal, you know? Then at about 3:16:42 this morning, my feed from one of the satellites suddenly got cut off. I mean, I don't really pay attention to surveillance satellites, you guys have way too many up there for one mech, even one like me, to keep track of, you know? But when I checked for that one, it wasn't there. This was the last image it had, which really isn't much of anything. Now, at the time, it was about here," he said as the image warped to display a globe with the satellite in question a bright red against the sea of blue satellites over the green globe. The image warped again, shifting to indicate that it was around the upper US, about where the Lakes were.

"Then," he continued, the image shifting to what Will recognized as satellite feed, which suddenly went staticy and disappeared, "at 3:17:01, my feed from all of the surveillance satellites just kablooyed."

"Wait," Will interjected, "they were _all_ destroyed?"

"No," Optimus said, studying the projected electrical 'snow' before he looked at Will. "They were disabled by one of our weapons."

"Right in one," Blaster said, pointing to Optimus as if to say that he was on the ball. Which of course he was, he was the leader of the Autobots. "At 4:04:12, I got feed back from them, except for that first one that went offline. But that's not the interesting part, the interesting part is that at 25:21 after three, there were reports of strange disturbances and property damage in the urban areas of this city the humans call Detroit." The satellite image of North America suddenly sharpened and zoomed in, again and again, until they were seeing a bird's eye view of the city and the destruction. "By 31:05, it was in the 'downtown', and then at 38:56, the first report of the Cobo Center behind destroyed came in." The image adjusted to display it, and while it was impossible to see the damage from the roof, Blaster had resources. The image he was projecting morphed to show image and video of the inside of the Center.

"Aw, no," Epps said. "_Hell_ no."

Will kind of thought that Epps had summed it up perfectly, right there.

" ... is the Cobo Center a dealership?" one of the guys asked blankly.

"No, man," Epps said, "no. NAIAS. North American _International_ Autoshow, man. Aw man, _hell_ no. We talkin' Ferraris, Corvettes, probably some hybrid shit, man, _man_, what the fuck?"

"This is just great," Will said, "I don't -- I don't even know what we're going to tell people this time. Oh God. I am in such _shit_."

"Yeah, well, it's not just you," Blaster said, "reports suggest we're dealing with a whole squad of Cybertronians. Five or six at least. But check this out." He shifted the image again. "This occurred at around 2:28:59." The image was imperfect, but even the humans could tell that there had been something of a firefight. Blaster adjusted the image, revealing blurry shots of what seemed to be the fallen shapes of more robots, and two brightly colored smudges, one darker shade, and one shadowy one that barely registered.

"What the hell is that?" Epps asked, "man, this is like trying to watch one of those documentaries of _Sasquatch_ or something. Blurry pictures and shit."

"Excuse me," the black humvee said politely, "Blaster, could you --? Thank you."

"Not a problem, bigbot."

Hound processed for a second, then projected the image in much sharper detail, revealing the odd image of four robots from above, projected side-by-side with an image of four vehicles driving away from the scene of the 'carnage'. "There. That any better, Epps?"

"Man," he said, "is there anything you _can't_ do?"

Apparently taking the question seriously, Hound blinked down at Epps and said, "science, for one."

That kind of boggled the mind, but the humans just kind of had to accept that for whatever reason, not every robot had the same software.

"Okay, okay, anyway," Will stressed, trying to get them back on track before this whole very important briefing devolved into another 'shiny robots' discussion the way most of them did, "so we have four robots kicking can and taking names, and -- and reenacting Godzilla or whatever --"

"Actually," Blaster said, "I don't think those were the same Cybertronians."

Will stared. "What? How many transforming robots do we _have_ over there?"

"Reports suggest at least seven."

" ... we have _seven_ fucking robots loose, goin' around and _blowing shit up_?"

The Autobots all kind of shuffled around, looking at each other and clicking. "Yes?" Hound said tentatively.

"The good news is that they're probably Autobots," Arcee said brightly. "After we get in contact with them, the property damage will go down significantly!"

Will felt a huge headache building right behind his eyes. It was entirely too early for this. He thought about Mission City, and the kind of destruction that only _five_ Autobots caused, and it developed into a splitting migraine. This bunch didn't even seem to have the excuse of trying to protect some ancient alien artifact of unbelievable power.

Hell, there wasn't even a Decepticon in sight. What a bunch of crazy bastards.

-+-

Because things rarely worked out the way they were planned, even if the one doing the planning supposedly had 'superior tactical genius' and way up-to-date data analyzers, it took them a lot longer to navigate the city than it should have. That and, well, Sam kinda got lost.

Like. A lot.

"You're freakin' brilliant, Sideswipe," he told the mech darkly. Did he mention that he wasn't the only one who'd gotten lost? Oh, sure, Sideswipe _claimed_ that he had come looking for Sam, but he didn't believe that for a second, for one knowing Sideswipe -- and no, that right there was a good enough reason not to believe it.

"Hey," Sideswipe said defensively, "at least I found us a spot to get a look around at."

They'd been lost for the last fifteen minutes or so, but all together, Sam had been lost since shortly after they tried to leave. It wasn't anything faulty with Prowl's program, but rather faulty with Sam, who _had_ figured out this whole 'driving without eyes' thing, but hadn't been prepared to function with seeing in only one dimension. The others had apparently not thought of this, because although sonar kind of immediately made sense in a 'not going further that direction' sort of way, it didn't make much sense in the 'this shape is this thing' kind of way.

How Sideswipe even found him was a little bit of a miracle or something.

"I dunno," Sam said, "unless you thought they'd be somewhere close enough to _see_, I don't really know what the point was. Since. You know. Eyesight. It only goes so far."

"You know," Sideswipe said, turning to peer at him, "you may have learned a few things from us, Boxy."

"What?" he said blankly.

Sideswipe ignored him for a moment, holding remarkably still while he checked out the whole entire situation. At least that was one good thing about this situation -- separated from Sunstreaker, Sideswipe actually seemed to have some sort of subroutines that allowed him to comply with the general '_hidehidehide_' thing that was always bugging Sam. Being seventeen feet of giant robot alien on a world of five-nine organics would probably do that to a robot, though. Deciding that the coast was clear enough, he waved Sam on and they creeped out of the dubious cover provided by the overpass.

"At least we're almost out of Detroit," Sam muttered, "and what? Homeless people? Crazy anyway, right? No one will believe them."

Neither of them were too enamored with the idea of 'rolling blind', so to speak, which a crazy person could say was why they had ended up in their own two-man group, searching for the others. Supposedly, that stupid 'EMP' thing didn't affect Sideswipe's eerie ability to track his counterpart, but Sam was discovering that this ability pulled in a straight line, and they had to detour to get around highly populated spots. So far, despite the weather, there hadn't been any flaming trash cans with hobos collected around them, but Sam was still holding out hope.

Not ... that he particularly _wanted_ to see hobos around a trash can, but ... it would kind of complete the whole 'stupid horror movie' atmosphere of the entire thing. Seriously? Turning into a giant robot and then the whole 'let's use the small one for parts' and then the whole firefight in the NAIAS ... well, okay: Sam had kind of gotten over that whole becoming a giant robot thing, since he'd been one for months now, but it was still surreal when he realized that he _had gotten used to being a giant robot_.

"You know," Sideswipe said as they took cover behind a cement pillar that wouldn't have even provided _Sam_ with adequate cover, "I think Prowl was onto something here with this program."

Sam glanced up at him. Somehow, when Sideswipe had been talking mostly to Sunstreaker, Sam had managed to totally ignore the fact that Sideswipe was perhaps even more of a chatterbox than he himself was. Which was amazing, if anything anyone had ever told him since forever was true. "What do you mean?" he asked. If he didn't direct Sideswipe, the mech would go off on some weird tangent and Sam would probably be very, very sorry.

"This sonar thing," Sideswipe said, judging that it was safe for them to move on and stepping out into the open. "In this galaxy, it seems that most of your elements are pretty primitive. And unstable. Mostly primitive, though. Anyway, if you know what you're doing, our alloy looks different in it. Which means that Prowl's accidentally created hide-n-seek hunting tech. Which, so you know, is awesome."

"What? Like you couldn't tell _before_?" Sam asked skeptically.

"Boxy," Sideswipe said with some exasperation, "if someone's tech'd _you_ up to do it, then it exists. No. Mostly, hunting Decepticons depends on the fact that Decepticons _hate_ to sit around anywhere very long, so they don't really ever lose the heat energy. Sometimes they manage it, but with _this_ tech ... it's gonna be fun." He was making that white noise again.

Christ. Sam wondered if Bumblebee had ever done that and he just hadn't _noticed_. Bumblebee had _vibrated_ often enough. Rumbled a bit. Maybe it was like that thing he'd read about in history class, that thing where it meant one thing when Americans threw up 'the horns', and another in Europe or Spain or whatever.

"Ever stop to think that if you can do it, the 'Cons can do it?" he asked.

"Duh."

He thrust his claws up, waving them in an absentmindedly defensive manner while he made another paranoid sweep of the area and saw no one. "I'm just saying," he said. "Seriously, though. If you just discovered a program that lets you spy out ... hibernating 'Cons or whatever, then they can find Autobots that are hiding, too."

"I am never taking you Con hunting. Ever."

Good, because Sam never wanted to go Decepticon hunting. Ever.

Before long, they were forced to revert back to car form in the spirit of not being seen, which neither of them were thrilled about. For Sam, it was a little more complicated than just the fact that neither of them were too good at using the sonar program for eyes and absolutely nothing else -- it was also because he was a different car now, which mean he _drove_ different. It made sense, but Sam hadn't really _expected_ it, somehow.

"Almost there, Boxy," Sideswipe said as they maneuvered onto the road in a way humans would have been pressed to imitate. Even the most skill driver wouldn't have been able to drive so close to another vehicle, just so that they could hear one another talk. Sam didn't really know what Sideswipe was talking about, since if the program didn't tell him that all together, that sound made a Lamborghini shape, he wouldn't know Sideswipe from a brick wall. Hopefully, when they got their collective act together, they could just wait for one freakin' moment until all of his scanners came back online.

"Not nearly there enough," he muttered.

That was about the time that two freakin' blocks of sound-reflecting blobs came out of _nowhere_ and he nearly took a nosedive into the nearest wall. He over corrected and almost ran straight into the larger of the blobs, which swerved gently out of the way as everyone came to a squealing halt.

"You were saying?" Sideswipe called cheerfully.

"Oh, maybe that I should just _get some fucking warning next time_?" Sam snarled, a little shaken. Just 'a little' since suddenly having two cars appear out of figurative nowhere was hardly as harrowing as Sideswipe trying to drown them all forever or that whole deal with the cop cars in England. Or some of his dreams previous to this whole escapade, for example.

"Sure," Sunstreaker said acerbically, "next time, I'll _honk_."

"We _are_ trying to remain unnoticed," Sideswipe added helpfully, the betraying traitor that he was.

"A hard thing to do when you insist on drawing attention," Prowl informed him darkly.

"I _get_ it already, with the orange and the shape!" Sam snapped, perhaps a little more irritated by the exchange simply because _Prowl_ was the vehicle he only missed because Prowl got the hell out of the way. Losing control of his own body wasn't something he was going to enjoy any time soon.

There was an audible pause, and then Prowl broke it, saying: "Actually, I was referring to the noise you made when you attempted to run into me."

Ah. Well, Sam supposed there _was_ that, too. Humans _did_ tend to go investigate 'car crash' noises. "Great," he said briefly, unwillingly acknowledging that fact. "So, now, the others? Right?"

"Yes," Prowl said, shifting his wheels. "They should be gathered at a rendezvous point. Of course, it took a while to locate the two of you, so I can only hope they haven't decided to head out on their own." He eased past Sam's bumper (such as it was) and took point.

"Oh, wait, you mean _you_ have a map, at least?" Sam said with relief. "Oh good. I'm glad _somebody_ has something like foresight around here."

"Oh come on," Sideswipe said with an offended click. "Give a mech a break."

"I do not regret to inform you that there will be _no_ breaks given," Prowl rumbled. "I will be reporting this to Ironhide."

Prowl really was starting to remind Sam of that one kid in second grade who was always saying 'I'm gonna tell teacher on you!' complete with that singsong thing. Actually, now that he thought about it, that kid had been Sam. Well, he could hardly be blamed when his classmates gave him too much material.

"Frag," Sideswipe said unhappily. "Com'n, Prowl, like I could really predict being hit by that pulse! The humans' network was supposed to _stay_ there, you know."

"You were _trained_ better, Sideswipe," Prowl said, completely unsympathetically.

Prowl clearly didn't understand the whole trauma of being stuck on a small ship with nowhere to go for _six freakin' weeks_. The fact that Sideswipe was still even slightly interested in doing something other than blowing shit up (granted, not often, but come on) was something like a miracle. Even _Sam_ had been a little excited about shooting things. So really, Prowl needed to relax.

"It could be worse," he said helpfully. "Sideswipe could be, like ... yunno." He searched his memories, and came up with: "breaking buses in half. Or, you know. Yeah."

"Given the difficulty a mech of Sideswipe's stature and model would have in breaking a bus in half," Prowl said, "I doubt it. Please define how it could be worse, realistically."

At first, Sam wasn't really sure what happened when he spontaneously read damage all over his freaking shell, and he attempted to kill everyone by swerving suddenly. It took a split second of furious computations, but he swiftly realized that his stupid glitched programing was completely retarded in ways he hadn't realized before. In that he had gotten a sudden sensory overload, which his human parts remembered tended to be painful; his Cybertronian programming responded to that by saying that he'd been damaged because it was about as intelligent as a quantum physicist and as smart as a stoner -- it learned fast, but it didn't always make the right connections.

The connection being that a sheet of water from the sky had fallen on them. It was raining. Of _freaking_ course. It wasn't like Sam was unaccustomed to rain and gloomy weather after the whole misery of the goddamned British Isle or whatever, but _Christ_. He could probably tolerate never seeing any moisture come out of the sky for ... ever. Ever again.

"Prowl," he said sharply, "you and I are going to have a conversation about asking questions you don't really want to know the answer to. _Soon_."

"I fail to see what it is you mean."

Sideswipe was over there making that noise again, the bastard.

"Don't talk to me," he said, bristling. "No, seriously. Don't talk to me ever again, okay?"

So, it was raining and Sam both irritated and miserable. On the other hand, all the rain drops seemed to have the unintended side effect of making the whole world a lot more clearer than it had been before, at least in the short term. It muffled a lot of the noise pollution -- well, what noise pollution had been present at four in the morning. But clearer view or not, it didn't really change that now the road was slippery.

About the second time that Sideswipe hydroplaned a short distance, Sam got the feeling that the antics would have been a lot more wild if Prowl wasn't here. The stupid jerk really wasn't fooling anyone into thinking that it was all by accident. Proved when Prowl said, testily, "_Sideswipe_." And more obviously when a second later, Sunstreaker slammed into Sideswipe's side.

"Knock it off," Sam added irritably. "Christ." Not that Thing One and Thing Two really listened to him, but he had to throw his two cents in there, somewhere.

"I suppose I should become accustomed to this," Prowl said unhappily. "If alterative modes are any indication of subtly ..."

"_No_," Sideswipe gasped with humor, humming as he dropped back to cruise beside Prowl, "what _did_ that fragger imitate?"

"_Which_ fragger?" Sunstreaker asked dryly.

"It doesn't matter," Prowl said dismally. "I am not entirely certain what either of them scanned, but I am no longer so concerned with how much attention _your_ alternative modes seem to draw."

" ... oh my God," Sam said weakly, "you mean there is something more gaudy than red and yellow Lamborghinis?"

"If any mech could find a mode like that, _those two_ could," he confirmed unhappily.

Sunstreaker seemed less than impressed by their despair over his alternative mode, although some of his bad attitude might have been caused by the thought that someone actually managed to find something flashier than him.

"I need to see this for myself," Sam said.

"You probably will, pretty soon," Sideswipe said cheerfully. "That's where we're headed, right?"

Prowl made an affirmative noise, retaking point. They traveled in relative silence through the heavy rain for another fifteen minutes or so before Prowl led the way off the road and behind a building. Behind the building was what could have been an employee parking lot, although there was only one vehicle parked there. Why became obvious, since as soon as they drew near, it began to click and crackle at them. Although he was able to immediately identify it as the Cybertronian language since Sideswipe tended to use it at his counterpart, he wasn't thrilled with the reminder that these guys were still from the far reaches of space.

A part of him was kind of amused and alarmed at the thought he had that they weren't 'tamed robots'. What the hell.

Prowl then launched into _another_ lecture, though this one thankfully only lasted a few moments; the scolding tone was unmistakable to Sam, whether he could understand what was being said or not. The car made a few comments that churned with sheepish tones, as he presumably accepted the rebuke before launching into a short and concise set of clicks and staticy noises.

The general consensus seemed to be to transform, so Sam followed suit, and gave a massive shudder when he finally had all of his pieces in their final position. Although he was far from unfamiliar with the sensation of water dripping and sliding around inside him, it still kind of creeped him out. That, and as he looked around, it seemed that they were all beginning to steam. The rain was much cooler than their internal workings, and despite efforts to keep their temperature regulated, the difference was enough.

He could also now see that they were standing behind some kind of lonely bar in the middle of nowhere, and also that the robot that had met them was the same blue car that he'd run into earlier. Also, his face was nothing short of startling for baring some abstract resemblance to Sam's imprecise memories of Barricade, and the fact that his hands weren't hands at all. Hell, Sam thought that _he_ had claws, but his were at least arranged more like hands. This guy had ... prongs or something.

Apparently, he wasn't the only one that recognized someone else, either, since the blue bot glanced at him and clicked twice. All this really did was firm the idea that his face was bug like.

He gestured them forward, and since Prowl and the counterparts tramped off into the muck after him, Sam reluctantly followed suit. They really hadn't gone that far into the wilderness when the sound of an argument reached Sam's sensors. And, well, 'homicidal copier machines' didn't really even begin to cover what _that_ sounded like. The rain was coming down so hard by this time that they were practically in the middle of the mess before Sam actually _saw_ the others.

There were four Autobots in attendance, including their guide, who was even at the moment moving to try to interject himself between the two noisiest mechs there. Sam was a little impressed on both sides that these two seemed inches away from having one of those infamous giant robot death matches, since one had rather horrifically powerful looking guns, and the other was shorter by a few feet and apparently those feet had gone into the _giant fucking blades_ that were sprouting out of his arms and nearly doubled their length. _Christ_.

Also, the sword wielding suicidal manic? Sam's oh-so-intelligent computer of a brain informed him that it was the same Cybertronian that had nearly mowed him down back at the auto show. Of course.

No one paid their arrival any mind at all, since apparently the looming battle between these two was much more important than even _trying_ to hide at this point. _Everyone_ was saying _something_ very excitedly, which could have been 'fight fight fight!' for all Sam could understand. This excited chatter didn't exclude their guide, either, because he'd immediately hurried forward to insert himself in the middle of this mess.

Talking what could have been a mile a minute, Blue shove his way between the two silver mechs. He was taller than both Sam and the mech with the swords, but not nearly as much as the gunner was taller than them. Of course, even if his interference was rather obvious in that he completely obscured the smaller mech, this didn't really impact the confrontation ... at all. All sizes aside, he might as well have been a Chihuahua yapping at two German Shepards, and the two silver mechs' agitation was reaching a high paced staccato beat, like ... combat drums or that stupid opera music, and as one, they lunged toward one another --

And Blue stuck his claw prong things out, and there was a brilliant flash of white light with a loud popping sound followed by the stench of burnt circuits. It was roughly like a transformer blowing, and the two larger bots jerked back, nursing their scorched chest bits. Chest plates? Kinda like plates. The mech with the blades began snarling venomously at Blue while the mech with guns ... well, 'reverted them to hands' wasn't the right description, really, because whatever the fuck _those_ were, they weren't really _hands_. 'Disabled his guns' might make a better description of what happened, and he began to whine.

'Aw man, I really _liked_ this shirt', Sam imagined that he was saying, as if the mech had spilled ketchup on it. Hey, judging by the way he was rubbing at the scorch marks with his only-roughly-digit-shaped appendages, he might have been saying something like that. Not that he was very successful at anything. Sam barely saw how those things really functioned as digits, since they were more like a bizarrely clustered set of jointed ... weird ... _things_.

Sam was still boggling over the new mechs with unusual body parts when Prowl stalked forward and gave a few sharp barks of static noise. This effectively let everyone know that they had arrived, and immediately, the entire group of Autobots snapped to attention. Not really the kind of attention that a human would come to, but the kind a robot alien might, becoming immediately still and silent, the cold blue of their optics training on Prowl's shape and following his movements faithfully.

It was kind of like a game of 'red light, green light', because some of them had frozen in comical positions.

Also, Sam was kind of impressed by this display. What _was_ it about Prowl that allowed him to step in and take complete control of a situation? Not only had the Lamborghini jerks pulled a complete one-eighty and bowed to his commands, but even in the middle of a tension filled confrontation, he was able to command respect. Of course, there was the unnaturally intriguing question as to if there were exceptions to this rule. Say ... if someone replicated the color nanite glitch that Sunstreaker implied that Sideswipe had displayed once. Could a yellow and pink polka dotted Prowl _still_ manage to command respect?

Prowl wound down pretty quickly this time, then turned to the mech whose guns only minimally made it back to being not-guns, and offered a claw tip. Then it was a bit like watching those biology videos where they showed one cell splitting into two, which split to four, and eight -- although not as extensive. There were only four robots, after all, but each mech passed the download to another. Sam made a wild guess that it was possible these downloads were taking significantly longer than being poked in the arm by Sideswipe. Then they all grew still again, whirling away and occasionally clicking to one another but mostly processing for a handful of seconds. Then the whole download process started all over again, only this time in reverse and ending with Sunstreaker and Sideswipe, the latter of which turned back and prodded Sam again.

Since he was kind of expecting it, he didn't jump, and instead accepted the tiny package of data that his process immediately transformed into a form he could understand. It was the information that would normally be pinged to him, free floating and unattached since it had been passed around unconventionally.

Then the silver gunner said, "okay, great. Now that we know we actually landed on the right planet this time, no thanks to --" a spit crackle broke in here. "As soon as we nail this nuet, we can be back with the others in no time!"

"Down, boy," the other silver mech said dryly.

He jerked around to click angrily at the other, but Prowl vented a lot of air into a huge huff of steam and said, "_stand down_, both of you. Silverbolt, _refrain_ from needling your commander."

"Commander my aft," the sword-wielding mech said, apparently Silverbolt, and Sam pinned the information down to the appropriate information file. "Glitch doesn't have _half_ of the experience I do."

The mech in question gave an insulted chirp, but subsided when Prowl waved him down. "You _will_ stand down," Prowl said darkly. "Your Prime placed him in a position of command, therefore you will obey."

"You might kinda wanna listen," Sideswipe said helpfully, "Prowl's kinda wound up, you know. Imprinter and all."

"Yeah," a red mech said, "about that -- no. No way. Imprinters don't belong on the front lines. Get rid of him."

What the hell were they _talking_ about?

"No," Silverbolt said slowly, thoughtfully, "let him stay. It couldn't hurt."

"Couldn't _hurt_?" the blue mech asked, "_How_ couldn't it?"

"Seriously, Silverbolt," the red one agreed, "we don't really need another bunch like _those_ two."

"Hey," Sideswipe objected, unusually serious for once and sounding a little angry.

"Can't really make much difference," Silverbolt said, idly cycling out hot air. "It's not like it happened _naturally_."

"Enough," Prowl said sharply, and the group immediately went back to attention. He glowered at the bunch for a moment before he focused on the gunner. "Would _someone_ care to inform me of the reason why the plan was deviated from?"

"Oh sure," the chrome mech said with a jerk of his head, spreading his arms wide in that human 'why me?' manner. "One of those glitched neutrals decided that it was time to make a move. He stole the project that --" and he whirl clicked a name --"was working on, then took a mad dash headlong into Earth."

"He waited until we were out of communication with you," the red mech said angrily. "Took us by surprise."

"I doubt the humans will be pleased with the damage to their city," Prowl sighed, "not to mention the damage done to their 'auto show'. You should hope you have not placed Optimus Prime in an unfortunate position."

"Hey," the chrome mech said defensively, "how were _we_ supposed to know that Optimus allied himself with the fauna?"

Sam reflexively got offended by the term up until he was distracted by the noise the blue mech suddenly made, sounding fairly alarmed.

"Hey, you guys," he said, "what do you think --" that same whirl-click of a name "-- is up to? We've never run into intelligent life before, and if this technology is any indication ..."

"Oh _slag_," the commander said, making a weak noise like a vehicle whose engine refused to turn over. It was a level of dismay previously unknown to Sam.

"Don't be so pessimistic," Sideswipe said in what could _almost_ be considered a soothing manner. Almost. Except for the undercurrent of hilarity. "According to the humans themselves, they actually _want_ to be abducted by aliens."

"You're _not_ helpful, Sideswipe," the commander said despairingly.

"I am not entirely sure that he will understand that one can not simply put them back together after he has investigated," Prowl said pensively. "And our systems will not reboot for another nine breems." He whirled absently for a second, processing, then said, "what is the likelihood that he was not in range of the pulses?"

Between themselves, the mechs clicked away, transferring a lot of data much quicker than speaking English could. Finally, the commander shrugged (where in the hell had he seen _spinners_?!). "Pretty good. Nerd was saying something about how we shouldn't all land in the same place, but he changed his mind when he realized he'd be landing alone. Fragger's suicidal, not stupid."

Was it just Sam, or did that sentence make _no sense whatsoever_? He looked around, but apparently it was only him, since no one seemed to think it was anything unusual.

Prowl considered this for another moment, then said, "perhaps he will simply settle for studying their network in lieu of engaging in first hand data gathering."

"And perhaps Megatron will call this whole thing off as the biggest joke in history," Sideswipe said brightly.

"And maybe he's dead," the commander of the Fourth said, "or at least your informant seems to think so."

Some kind of click-chirp snapped out of Sam's chassis. He had every right to be insulted -- killing Megatron was not only something he personally did, but it was how he ended up like -- like _this_ to begin with. "Listen, you shiny gun-wielding _maniac_," he snapped, pointing at the mech with one long, sharp claw. "Megatron is _dead_; Prime thought so, the human scientist thought so, they _dumped him into the ocean_, because it's _so_. 'Course, I guess if you don't believe it, we could always go out in a boat and you could take a dip to see his crustacean encrusted _carcass_. Yes? No? Sound like a plan to you?"

"Whoa, whoa," the gunner said tolerantly, "I was just saying. Anyway, it wouldn't be necessary. If Megatron's dead, we'll never see his ugly face again. He likes being on the front of battle entirely too much for it to be any other way."

"That is entirely accurate," Prowl agreed. "But rather irrelevant at this point. Our primary concerns at this time are to retrieve our missing, retrieve the project that the neutral has stolen, and not least of all, reporting back to Optimus Prime."

"And how do you propose to do any of that?" the smallest red mech inquired skeptically. "Every minute the nerd's out there alone, some squishie is one step closer to a messy if unintentional end, that _fragger_ who is like some kind of dark shard in a slagging _meteor_ field is putting distance between us as we speak, and Optimus Prime's last known location was a compromised base _lunar cycles_ ago!"

"I am well aware of these setbacks, Cliffjumper," Prowl said testily.

"Great," Sam said, "are you aware of the setbacks of recharging?"

Sideswipe _groaned_ like a steel beam just trying to snap. "Again?" he asked unhappily. Then: "No, no, I should be surprise it's just _now_. Slag. Two fights and a new altmode. Alright."

"Thanks for giving me permission," he said darkly. "It's not like my systems will automatically shut down at all."

Prowl stared at Sam, giving him the rather uncomfortable idea that he had just made himself something of a huge inconvenience for the dark mech.

"What?" he said. It wasn't like Sideswipe and Sunstreaker hadn't realized that Sam didn't have a choice in the matter.

"Hey," the gunner said suddenly, turning to the blue mech, "do you think you can give him a jump-start?"

The blue mech shot him a startled and reproachful look, shifting away from him sidewise.

Sam was not so mild. "_No_," he said. "No. No, I don't even want to _hear_ anything about jump-starting. No, no _no_."

Prowl shifted. "That changes the plan somewhat."

"I really, really suggest you don't leave him alone while he does that," Sideswipe said helpfully. "The only time we did that, we lost track of him for a while."

"_I couldn't freakin' communicate at the time_!" Sam snapped. "I can do that now! It changes things!" He really resented this whole 'whose gonna baby sit Sam' thing that the robots seemed to be having.

"It should be safe to allow the child to recharge while we do what needs to be done," Prowl decided. "In the meantime, we should disperse, collect information. That way, we might have a better chance of locating --" the crackle spit that must be a name, "-- when our communication network came back on."

"Sounds good to me," the gunner agreed.

"Yeah," Sideswipe said, "but so, how are any of you one-of-a-kind cars going to go incognito in the same city that's been showing them for a while now?"

A silence descended on the group and they all looked at each other, at a loss.

"Great," Sam said. "Get back to me when you figure that out."

-+-

Tracking nine Autobots (there were nine, after all, not just the seven they'd initially managed to identify) was harder than a mech would have predicted.

There were a few factors contributing to this. First of all, none of their previous battlefields had ever been this complex. Humanity was the first alien race that they'd come across that had been advanced enough to have something approaching a civilized community. Then there was the whole thing where they had reverse engineered Cybertronian biology. Then came the fact that no one could get in touch with the newcomers. Plus, they were apparently tracking _someone_ or something.

The brownout that covered the entire eastern seaboard hadn't exactly helped much either. It clearly originated in some Cybertronian intelligence, because the entire human network had lit up with spark energy for a few hours.

So what that all came out to was that it was three days later that they finally managed to catch up them in Tennessee. "(Looks like Hound was right,)" Jazz sent as he rolled his low laying alt mode behind a cement wall. He finally tracked down some of them to what appeared to be some kind of abandoned site. 'Tracked' being kind of a deceptive word, since really, he'd been sideblinded by what might as well have been a beacon saying 'come check this out'. "(It _was_ the counterparts that took down those Decepticons upstate.)"

"(You have a visual?)" Optimus queried.

"(Yeah,)", he returned, "(but I ain't stickin' my sensors out there. It's the counterparts and a pair of mechs, one of which is probably Cliffjumper.)"

"( ... one of which?)"

"(Yeah. One of which. You read me. There's _two_ chasebots out there with sensor arrays I don't even wanna think about.)"

"(I would be willing to help,)" Hound said. "(Cliffjumper's weapons aren't strong enough to do much damage to me.)"

"( ... don't even let Ratchet hear you talking like that,)" Jazz sent dryly.

"(What are they doing, standing around like idiots?)"

Jazz looked again, carefully scanning below the normal sensor range that would have alerted most Cybertronians. "( ... hiding, I think.)"

"( ... hiding?)" Bumblebee queried. "(What from? Not humans, obviously.)"

"(No,)" Jazz said, "(it's not that kind of hi --)"

There was a sudden concussive blast that rattled his communication transceivers, swiftly followed by an electromagnetic pulse that was typical of such blasts and shocked him for a moment. It wasn't nearly powerful enough to knock his finer instruments offline the way their normal pulseblasts did, but it was still disorienting enough. Jazz froze there for a startled moment, then scanned the other Autobots. Both chase class mechs were swooning, and the counterparts seemed amused, as usual. One of them were attempting to help the smaller chasebot up. The other appeared to be peering over the wall they'd been hiding behind being irritable in general. It seemed that Sunstreaker had decided to be yellow this time around.

"(Seems like it's Wheeljack type of hiding,)" he sent to the others dryly.

"(Oh Primus.)"

"(What is this? Did all the worse mechs in the entire Autobot allied forces decide to band into one nightmarish, glitched group?)"

Radio silence prevailed for a moment before Bumblebee said: "(Blaster, butt out.)"

"(Hey,)" the comm hub sent, hurt, "(I was just keepin' an eye out for everyone else back here at the base. You know I'm the only one that can signal this far. Besides, Ratchet wanted to keep an eye out just in case of an emergency --)"

"(Blaster,)" they all sent, minus Optimus who wasn't quiet so informal, "(butt. Out.)"

When there wasn't a reply, Jazz figured that at least if Blaster was still spying on their signals, he wasn't going to drop comments here and there. Frag, they all knew that having the counterparts around would at least make things 'interesting', but that adding Cliffjumper and Wheeljack to the mix would hardly make things better, so they didn't really need commentary to that effect.

"Hey, Wheeljack," one of the chasebots called, "its no good. We definitely felt that."

"Frag," came a voice from the other side of the wall, and a small mech began to climb over it, Wheeljack's signature light array strobing as he said: "okay, okay, so let me make a few adjustments --"

"_No_," the chasebot being tentatively held up by Sideswipe said. "_No_, Wheeljack, _no_. No, you will _not_ be making 'a few' adjustments, you said that about a hundred adjustments ago -- I'm gonna purge my tank. I'm gonna -- I'm gonna -- ooh. I don't feel so good anymore." He waved the others off with a null, bent over, but didn't actually make any noises that would have forewarned a purge. Cliffjumper still took a few good steps and got clear, though, shooting the other mech a wary look.

Sideswipe's amusement was enough to reach even Jazz, but he turned to Wheeljack, towering over the small mech. "It really isn't any good," he said, "even 'Streaker and I feel it, Wheeljack."

"(Hey guys,)" Jazz sent, having been stunned into silence before now. "(These guys, you know, the ones that landed all of three days ago?)"

"(What?)" Bumblebee sent back, familiar enough with Jazz's sense of delivery.

"( ... they're speaking _English_.)"

No one responded to this announcement for a moment or two, and then Optimus decided to take one for the team.

"(Let us hope that this is not due to any interactions with humans,)" he sent, although he couldn't completely stop himself from sounding doubtful. "(Jazz, it's imperative to make contact.)"

"(Right, right,)" he sighed. "(Sure, I'll stick my neck out here. Take one for the team. And all that jazz.)"

"( ... you were kind of rattled by that blast that cut you off, weren't you?)" Bumblebee asked.

"( ... just a little,)" he acknowledged. It was a common side effect of Wheeljack's experiments. Especially for Jazz, since he had that issue with his sensor array as it was.

So, his own minor program malfunctions in mind, he double checked to make sure that none of the Autobots were actually doing anything more than getting into what seemed to be a wild kind of argument about Wheeljack's newest attempt at doing ... whatever it was he was attempting to do at this time, and he sent out a ping to identify himself.

He was immediately hit with confirmation of the identities of three of the four. It was the fourth set of data that really caught his attention, though.

Jazz was an old, _old_ model. Most mechs didn't know that, but his function was a far, far cry from the saboteur he spent his time being these vorns. And that was probably the only reason he was able to piece together what little bit he understood from that forth data set. Through the confusing tangle of information stored in a way that his processor hadn't been programmed to understand, he managed to take what he _did_ understand and come up with one startling answer.

And as the chasebot swung upright, saying: "_Jazz_?!" Jazz immediately and completely unintentionally opened communications to the original landing group, those who would know the _significance_ of the knowledge, and sent "(_Sam's alive._)"

-+-

"(_Sam's alive._)"

* * *

- Because I was kind of beating myself up, and there's a giant time gap in the last third of this chapter, you can expect that explained next chapter. Yes. I said NEXT CHAPTER. Oh God. No, really. I'm working on it.

- In case anyone wanted to know what an Intermission from Prowl's Pov would sound like, let me spoil it here. It would basically be an awkward, long winded multi-paragraphed thing that basically would say: "WHY AM I SURROUNDED BY SUCH FAILURES?! FML!"

- Here's a thought for you. Sideswipe and Sunstreaker. Sounding like Fez from That 70s Show. Does this not make your brain go FML?

- Also, it occurred to me that the classic 'BEEP BEEP DOP BEEP' noise transformers make during their transformations might actually be them shouting things like 'OPTIMUS: TRANSFORM' in their own language. See? Sam was right. Japanese robots. Super advanced Japanese robots.

- I told you. I wrote this chapter on cold medication. The Q. It talks to me.

**SHOUT OUT**: Thank the following people for being the true drive behind sick!mei to write this damned chapter. **Deserthermit**, for acknowledging the petpeeves of some authors. **Karaq**, for being quietly supportive and not nagging, even though the urge must have been there. **Caelum**, for just generally being awesome about this whole mess. **Synaltern**, for reminding me while I was in a funk that I don't need a REASON. **Bloody_american** for encouraging me to write WTFever. And **drharper**, cos LOL.  
And for anyone I didn't mention by name, **all the awesome people** I chat with through the PM thing on FF and on Livejournal. You should know who you are. 3


	19. A Bildungsroman

**Chapter Seventeen: It's a Bildungsroman, Samuel Witwicky!**  
Sam assumed that humanity had fucking ruined Wheeljack's day on account of not only being able to use radios and things, but also having a spoken language themselves.

-+-

The last three days were something like a blur for Sam, and the following ones probably wouldn't be any better.

Three days ago, the program that Prowl had helpfully provided for him sprung him out of recharge around six that morning. He'd been a bit anxious about this whole sleeping alone and unguarded thing to begin with, and he hadn't wanted to be still carjackable in case someone decided to show up at the building they'd hidden behind; a guy would hope a bar wasn't in danger of opening at six in the morning, but Sam would rather be safe than sorry. He was only slightly less anxious when he woke up alone, all of the others having launched a massive search for their missing number and that 'unknown' guy, but at least all his programs had rebooted and he could easily get in contact with the others.

Sideswipe had implied that things weren't progressing all so great. Actually, he hadn't so much as 'implied' that they'd gone badly so much as came out and _said_ that thing were 'fragged to a terabyte or two'. Sam didn't know how big a terabyte was, and he wasn't really all that interested in knowing, either. He knew a few megabytes was quite a hunk of information, and made his Internet lag, and so anything bigger than that was a huge 'do not want'.

The good news was that they had found this Wheeljack character, and he hadn't caused any large amounts of undo damage. The bad news was that they had to search pretty far and wide for the guy they all seemed to be extremely displeased with. Of course, he'd stolen something from them, so Sam guessed that he kind of understood that whole thing.

Consulting with Prowl, he'd relocated further down the state, since that was about where they'd tracked the 'unknown' to, and recharged more completely, since two hours was not enough for the amount of energy he'd put out. It was hard for him to locate a hiding point that he was satisfied with since there was all this being ... whatever car he was. And orange. Orange was not typically a standard color, and was therefore pretty noticeable. That and his programming seemed to have developed a whole new level of paranoia that Sam wasn't completely unfamiliar with as he was a healthily paranoid individual himself ... especially since that whole Allspark thing.

And so not going there.

This was where things started to get blurry. He vaguely remembered coming out of recharge and getting another update from Sideswipe. He'd surfed a nearby wifi hotspot to find out about this whole 'Detroit disaster recovery' project that had been launched. And at that point, he was having to rely on what his programs were telling him _must_ have happened, because he didn't remember a damned thing. _Logically_, at that point, someone had met up with him so that they could all move after the bot that kept running away. There was a badly recorded -- or badly corrupted -- image in his memory banks dated for that day of Silverbolt in his crazy car mode. The memory of Silverbolt telling him that they'd found the unknown completely by chance and that Sam had been thrown into a power grid was a hell of a lot clearer than anything he retained from the actual event. Which. Um.

Prowl told him that logically, someone had taken a primitive weapon array such as the one that Jolt sported and tried to do something extreme with it. It wasn't unheard of, Sunstreaker told him, for neutrals to do some crazy things. It was the whole secret behind his entire existence, Sideswipe explained, because they hadn't seen anything like him before. Either he himself or some mech out there had rerigged his entire structure, just short of a complete reformatting, Wheeljack said; it probably made his software so unstable that being slagged to the Pit made it more than easy for most of his memory files to become corrupt and unrecoverable, so that in self preservation, his CPC just flushed the system to start all over again.

The thing was, they figured that he'd been a work in progress, and that being introduced to a large amount of power had triggered the mechanism that had been laying dormant inside of him. All the electrons had shifted one way. Then they'd shifted another. Then back. And there had been some massive backlash from Sam and the entire eastern seaboard had gone dark. It had done one or two extremely weird things. First of all, for three hours or so, the entire inert cabling web had lit up with Cybertronian radiation like a Christmas tree. There was, as far as Wheeljack could tell, no real reason or repercussion of such a thing -- no little baby homicidal robots running around, no human injuries or fatalities, no change in the molecular composition of any of the metals between Sam and the coast.

When he finally recovered from whatever happened nearly four hours later, the only apparent change that Sam or anyone else could uncover seemed to be Sam himself. Having run a self diagnostic, he made the discovery that his entire mechanical setup had changed. Well -- not _entirely_. But he resented it. Sideswipe blew a gear out of alignment simply laughing his ass off because apparently Sam had taken pointers from the various robots that he'd seen.

Because he had doors. On his back. What. The. Fuck.

Of course, no one else had understood why Sideswipe found this hilarious until he said 'mini Prowl', at which point Sam had been soundly laughed at. Neither he nor Prowl had been terribly impressed.

Later, Sam figured that he kind of reluctantly understood why Sideswipe found this hilarious. Prowl looked professional with his doors -- hey, _Bumblebee_ looked professional with those spiffy doors. Even _Cliffjumper_, who was an Audi and only about seven inches larger than Sam looked okay with those doors -- perhaps because he lost half of the door somewhere along with way. In either case, Sam? Sam looked ridiculous. He suspected it had something to do with the fact that he was kind of thin for a mech.

On the other hand, after he recovered from his eternal shame, he discovered that he seemed to have gone up in the Autobot's estimation. Which wasn't to say he still didn't get called 'Boxy', but Prowl stopped calling him 'child'. Hey, if he had known that all it took was being thrown into a power grid to get some respect, he would have done it hours ago.

Or not. Whatever.

-+-

After that, they managed to chase the unknown all the way down to Kentucky, and that was when the real fun began.

"Prowl!" Sam called, stomping (ineffectively, as his feet didn't really have much surface and therefore did not 'clunk') over to the tall dark mech. "Prowl! You keep me away from Sideswipe before I -- I -- do -- _something_ that we'll all regret!"

Prowl shifted in a way that Sam wouldn't have really understood before he'd had doors himself. However, since he'd had a crash course in just how unpleasant it was to get his doors struck, he recognized a defensive posture when he saw it. It was the exact same thing that happened with his receptor spikes. "As ominous as that sounds," Prowl said, "I seriously doubt your moral and physical capacity to do anything truly damaging to Sideswipe."

Sam didn't really have to stand around and be insulted, did he? Well, maybe he did, if he was going to get somewhere away from Sideswipe. "If I have to listen to _one more_ door joke, Prowl, I'm gonna do it! Don't say I won't, I'll do something and then we'll all be sorry!" He mimed choking the jerk, although he wasn't entirely sure that Prowl understood the significance of the gesture. "Seriously Prowl," he said, "and if he actually manages to grab them one of these times --!"

"I understand that it is unpleasant," Prowl said warily, perhaps understanding Sam's meaning after all, "but it's something you will have to learn to tolerate. I've had my own experiences --"

"Slag, no," Cliffjumper said. He hadn't been standing that far off, though Sam had thought he was thoroughly engrossed with his discussion with Hot Rod. Now the red mech swiftly came over, followed by seventeen feet of curious chrome commander. Sam had been somewhat startled to discover that Cliffjumper and he were something of brothers in arms. They were of similar make and model, both being chasebots with doors, both favoring the masculine vocal scale, although all of Sam's parts were somewhat smaller since he was on a slighter scale.

Now Cliffjumper got into Prowl's face, just about as much as a mech only a little larger than Sam _could_. "Slag, _no_," he said again, "he doesn't have to _get used to it_." He scoffed in Prowl's face ... or ... more like into his grill, and turned away to face Sam, putting a friendly null on his shoulder. "Now, you just let me bring you in on a little secret," he said, steering Sam a little to the side. "For one, you have a massive sensor array that was just being implemented on mechs when this whole mess started -- which means _you_ have them, but most mechs _don't_. So, one, they don't understand them, and two, they're really kind of curious about them. You see what I mean? Most don't mean anything by it, but they just can't seem to help themselves."

"Alright," Sam said, a little bewildered by this whole conversation.

He seemed pleased by Sam's acquiesce, making encouraging noises. "Now, you're also a chasebot, right?"

Sam nodded. "As far as I can tell, yeah."

"You're a chasebot," Cliffjumper reassured him bluntly. "So right. That's another thing a lot of mechs are curious about. Most mechs are general use -- they've all got the same basic model, same basic software, same basic hardware. Then you got things that are a little more exotic, like mechs that can fly, and mechs that can equally incorporate more than one alternative form -- and chasebots. Trust me, I tried playing nice; it doesn't work." He shook his head sadly, making a soft, resigned croon. "It just doesn't work." Cliffjumper seemed to linger on that thought for a moment before he looked back up at Sam and his facial structures shifted into what seemed to be an attempt at a human smile. "So I had to turn to ... more convincing methods."

Sam got the feeling that he thought he knew where this was going. "More convincing methods," he echoed, considering it.

Like scenting blood in the water, Cliffjumper began to hum encouragingly -- goading him, actually, since Sam was able to recognize this noise as the same one that Sideswipe would make when he was trying to bring others around to doing what he wanted them to. Not that it seemed to work well on Sunstreaker, but that didn't stop him. "Yup," Cliffjumper said, "a mech gets too persistent, well ... you just gotta show them where the _line_ is."

This whole conversation had started taking on a more sinister tone, which wasn't helped when Cliffjumper lifted his free null and shifted it into a cannon. He jerked the arm, mimicking the backlash from firing it. "This is your line maker," he said with satisfaction, and looked at Sam like he'd just bestowed the greatest secret known to Cybertronian kind.

Sam stared at the cannon, idly correcting the mech: "You mean marker." He pointed at the cannon and gestured between it and Cliffjumper. "So you mean I just --?"

Cliffjumper was nodding when Hot Rod suddenly reacted, spitting out a disbelieving "oh _Primus_." He quickly pushed his way into the two mech huddle. "Break it up, break it up! Alright, fine -- rookie, you're with me."

"Aw," Cliffjumper said, "com'n, I'd love to see that Sideswipe get his comeuppance ..."

"Stow it, Cliffjumper," Hot Rod said sternly, glowering before he turned to the rest of the group. "Alright," he called, "counterparts, you're with Prowl. Wheeljack with the rookie and myself. Cliffjumper, you're with Jolt."

"Hot Rod," Cliffjumper protested, "come on! If you won't let the rookie do it, at least let me --"

"Cliffjumper," Hot Rod snapped, "you are going with _Jolt_, and that's final."

Unwillingly, the red mech gave way. "_Fine_."

"Silverbolt," Hot Rod said, paused, and looked pained. "Silverbolt, with my group."

"I'm practically sparking with excitement," Silverbolt drawled sarcastically, "oh fearless leader."

Hot Rod made it halfway to saying something before he dropped his null and shook his head, declining at the last moment. But while he seemed ready to let it go, Silverbolt didn't quiet.

"Nothing to say?" the silver mech asked. "What? Glitch got your processor?"

"Silverbolt," Hot Rod said, sounding like he was suffering, "mute your vocals and roll out? Can you at least do that? _Without_ chattering like an imprinter?"

"Why you --"

"Silverbolt," Prowl said flatly.

The mech in question paused, started to say something to Prowl, stopped himself, and stood there restlessly on his wheels, his nulls idly clinking and scraping at the folding blades hidden within shifted. The dull red glare of the taillights on his chest flared briefly, but he finally settled and transformed. The silver corvette rolled away a few feet and flashed his taillights again.

"And Hot Rod," Prowl said, turning to the chrome mech, "do not ask of your squad, even the temporary mechs, what you can not do yourself."

"My bad," Hot Rod said dryly.

"Yes, it is," Prowl agreed blankly.

He shot Prowl a look then turned a 'why me' gesture toward the apathetic twilight overhead. "Alright, kids," he said, "let's move."

Sam took a moment to look at the cars he would be accompanying for the time being, if just to escape the Lambo jerks. He hadn't exactly ever seen anything like the car that Hot Rod turned into, but he figured that it was deliberately chosen for it's resemblance to some kind of alien space pod with wheels. Only ... well, much more awesome than that. And there was Silverbolt, of course, in his weird and predatory corvette shape, and Wheeljack who was pretending to be a car that looked completely out of place on the common road instead of being on a race track. Of course, Sam had actually seen this car compared against other small cars. He wasn't too impressed. _Miatas_ were bigger than that thing.

Well, at least in comparison, Sam would actually look _normal_.

Everyone split into their groups and took off, following the trail the unknown left behind. According to the others, the project that he'd stolen from Wheeljack wasn't completed, and was leaking some kind of energy signature, like a line of bread crumbs. The fact that they could follow this through all of the normal pollution of cities and highways was something of a mystery to Sam. It introduced him to fact that there were more specializations than just his ability to be faster on his wheels than most of the others, and his doors. He'd naively assumed that the feedback he was getting these days was better than the Autobots without.

The fact of the matter was that he, Prowl, and Cliffjumper were incapable of tracking whatever energy leak that this project supposedly leaked.

Sam was pretty much prepared to play the tail end of their game of 'follow the leader' that Wheeljack was leading on account of being the inventor of the project in question. Hot Rod was following a comfortable distance behind, and Sam had naturally figured that Silverbolt would be off doing his own thing.

He hadn't counted on Silverbolt being in a bad mood and spoiling for a fight, so he was caught pretty much unaware when the silver Corvette cut in front of him and would have clipped him if he hadn't dropped back in surprise. Now, Sam was well accustomed to jerk behavior for obvious reasons, so this could have ended there. Except that Silverbolt wasn't just being a jerk, he was trying to start a fight, which he seemed to figure would happen if he gunned his engine and zoomed ahead.

Normally, this wouldn't have really irritated Sam all that much except for the fact that he was already annoyed by the whole deal with Sideswipe being a jerk about his doors to begin with. Add insult to injury, and it was pretty much _on_.

He dropped back to get clear of the stupid silver jerk and made a sharp and aggressive cut to the side, swerving into the next lane of traffic and sped up. He didn't bother making his engine do any stupid human tricks, because it didn't work harder for the speed because that wasn't how Cybertronian engines _worked_, and he shot pass the Corvette, cutting him off. He leveled back out at just behind Hot Rod, since although Hot Rod wasn't exactly stern like Prowl and Optimus, he didn't think the guy would appreciate those kinds of antics.

Then Silverbolt shot up behind them and swerved around on Hot Rod's other side.

"(_Cut it out_, for Primus' sake!)" Hot Rod sent sharply. The wavelength rattled around in Sam's processor, and _wow_, apparently it was possible to 'shout' on radio waves without something like volume.

"(Quit trying to act like you could actually lead anything,)" Silverbolt sent back lazily.

"(We're distracting enough without stupid chasebot antics!)" Hot Rod shot back. "(Primus, Silverbolt, you're not even distantly related to that model!)"

"(Hey!)" Sam objected sharply, a little irked at the whole 'chasebot' remark.

He was summarily ignored as Silverbolt snapped: "(And guess what? You? Not even in the same _model scheme_ as Optimus Prime.)"

Sam assumed that this was the equivalent of saying that Superman was a lie, as there was suddenly _deafening_ radio silence. He decided to get clear a few lanes of traffic, just incase a spontaneous robot death match broke out.

"( ... so,)" Wheeljack suddenly sent him in a completely transparent and awkward attempt to change the subject, "(you used to be a neutral, huh?)"

-+-

"Hot Rod," Prowl said disapprovingly, "_why_ did you think it would be a good idea to terrorize the humans?"

"Well," Hot Rod said while he tried to figure out if he wanted to seem taller or shorter than Prowl, "that wasn't exactly what I was trying to do, you see. Since Optimus allied himself with the native fauna, I just figured it would be good to attempt some kind of contact to establish our message of good will --"

"You deliberately convinced Wheeljack to imitate one of their alien contact movies," Prowl said shortly. "Never mind the fact that a general standing order of remaining unnoticed was in effect."

"Ah," Hot Rod said. He glanced back at the others for help, but nothing was forthcoming. Sam kept his arms tightly folded across his chest bits, more than a little irritated. Wheeljack was standing off to the side, fidgeting nervously -- and when Wheeljack fidgeted, he kinda ... really ... urgh. See, Wheeljack displayed a certain amount of disturbing flexibility in daily life. It wasn't that he was any more or less foldable than the others, it was just that he casually used the ability to transform to make simple gestures. It was guaranteed to make any human nauseous, because coupled with those Escheresque body contortions was the LED light displays on his freakin' _face_ that cycled through some colors that Sam wasn't even sure humans could _see_.

Somewhere behind Sam, he could hear Sideswipe laughing, the jerk. Cybertronians, it seemed, believed in a public dressing down, because the others were also standing around while Prowl proceeded to launch into some Cybertronian lecture.

This whole public humiliation thing could have been avoided if someone had _just listened to Sam_. Despite the fact that everyone seemed slightly more respectful of him since he'd displayed an ability to crash entire power networks, no one seemed inclined to listen to his advice as far as not poking humans went.

Case in point: In the early morning hours, Hot Rod and Silverbolt got over themselves and actually worked together to goad Wheeljack into making contact with some humans. Despite all that Sam said in an effort to convince them to knock it off, Wheeljack decided that having explored the human culture extensively in the time between arriving on Earth and the others locating him, that he would attempt to do so in a culturally significant way.

This, luckily, was not like the aliens in Independence Day, but rather the way it had gone in the 'Close Encounters of the Third Kind' direction. He was probably inspired by his own LED display, which Prowl had informed him was 'ostensibly for the purpose of communication with alien life forms should they be completely unrecognizable in intelligence and communicative styles', which seemed to be longhand for Wheeljack suggesting organic life instead of robotic life (or at least, non-robotic). Sam assumed that humanity had fucking ruined Wheeljack's day on account of not only being able to use radios and things, but also having a spoken language themselves. Not that the mech ever seemed to imply it, but considering that he had physically altered his body in order to attempt to establish contact with foreign intelligence and it turned out to be unnecessary ...

Anyway, Kentuckens apparently didn't have the greatest sense of humor when faced with flashing lights and simple musical tones. Of course, it was kinda possible they thought it was a terrorist attack or something, which meant that they roughly made the right move when they called the freakin' cops. Either way, it was that moment that Sam discovered that he could run away faster from the police than Silverbolt, Wheeljack, or Hot Rod, the latter of whom had a head start.

Silverbolt, apparently, had only been there at the time to laugh the loudest when the whole thing flopped. Which it had, when the cops showed up, and _he_ had, long and loudly (and over the radio, because he wasn't _stupid_). Sam _kind of_ understood the whole thing behind Hot Rod deciding to put Silverbolt in their group since he didn't mix well with the counterparts, but he found it hard to believe on account of how Silverbolt continued to prove that he couldn't be trusted to shut the hell up for a moment and listen to Hot Rod.

"(I thought I heard someone say that Wheeljack was some kind of scientist?)" Sam sent to the peanut gallery standing nearby.

"(Yeah,)" Jolt replied, "(but if you're operating under the same premise that the popular culture of humanity is, you don't really understand what the programming codes that result in mechs like Wheeljack _do_.)"

"( ... alright, I'll bite,)" he said reluctantly. "(What do they do?)"

"(The easiest way to put it,)" Wheeljack broke in, "(is to say that if I retained the safety measures installed in the basic programming of every Cybertronian, common even -- and in some cases especially -- the Decepticons, then our culture as a whole would never advance.)"

Sam was slightly mortified, since he hadn't contacted Wheeljack to begin with, which meant that one of the bots he was talking to _had_. Then he actually heard what was being said. "(What,)" he said. "(Wait. You mean to tell me that you actually have a legitimate excuse to be a mad scientist?)"

There was an astround long pause, and then Wheeljack said: "(Oh. Oh yes. Yes, apparently, I do. How interesting. Humanity finds experimenting on their own abhorrent? But how could they fully explore the possibilities of their theories on their own organic bodies and chemical wiring?)"

"(Boxy,)" Sideswipe said over a private line, "(get back from him. Quickly.)"

"(This is fascinating,)" Wheeljack continued, finally looking away from Prowl and Hot Rod. "(You have fully adopted the human culture, have you not? Then, would you find it objectionable if I were to --)"

"Wheeljack," Prowl said suddenly, staring at the small bot. "No."

Sam was just managing to process -- to really _understand_ -- what it was Wheeljack was getting around to asking when both counterparts, not making the least humored noise, came up behind him so quietly that he would have missed the action but for the change in the electrical fields that his sensors were keyed into.

Wheeljack glanced up at both of them, not looking in the least intimidated, before he turned to Prowl. "I was only going to --"

"No, Wheeljack," Prowl said simply, "you were not." There was no variation of tone, nor was he displaying any kind of emotional response; he was speaking as evenly as if Wheeljack had suggested the sky was green when it wasn't.

"Ah," Wheeljack said slowly, glancing at the trio of larger bots, "so I wasn't."

This earned an affirmative noise from the large gray bot.

"(So,)" Sam sent, aware of the agitation he was broadcasting over the radio, "(anyone care to tell me why Wheeljack thought it was okay if he -- I don't know -- _ran experimental tests on me_?)"

"(It's what Wheeljack does,)" Sideswipe said, and he made nothing to indicate how he felt about that, which kind of gave him away. Abruptly, his hand landed on Sam's shoulder. "Boxy's coming with us," he informed everyone. He glanced back and relaxed a bit to actually say, carelessly, "Cliffjumper and Jolt can come, too."

"Oh, really?" Hot Rod said flatly.

"Or we can take Prowl," Sideswipe said lightly. "It'll be just like the good ol' times!"

The only one not surprised by this offer was Sideswipe himself. Prowl stared at him over Sam's head, then looked at the others. "Someone must uphold order," he said reluctantly.

"Aw," Sideswipe crooned, "I knew you liked us, Prowl!"

"Sideswipe," Sunstreaker said, "Shut up. For the love of Primus. Shut. Up."

-+-

So, private robot conversations were only private so long as no one decided to update someone else. That and Wheeljack was a scary, _scary_ individual. That was what Sam took away from Kentucky and what he learned all over again in Tennessee.

Actually, he reluctantly acknowledged, all of the Cybertronians were frightening creatures. It was easy to forget when they all put on the kid gloves when handling Sam. They were, after all, a people who had been fighting a war so long that most of them forgot how to _stop_. They didn't _trust_ the war to stop. It kind of said something about their war when the leader of the 'good' side one day decided that maybe he'd be better off dead, just to prevent a powerful artifact from reaching 'Con hands. Sure, it would have saved them from a horrible fate, but it wouldn't have saved anyone, really. Cybertronians kinda didn't need an unlimited power source to destroy anything.

Even with the fights, even with the 'Con threat looming in the back of Sam's mind, it was easy to forget that these odd, silly characters were people who had _killed_, and would kill again without even rerunning the calculations once.

_Bumblebee_ was a killer. And so was Sam, and he'd do well to remember that. He was a killer, and in the quiet and the darkness, he felt the quiet certainty that _he'd_ kill again, if provoked. (And maybe that frightening certainty of his murderous inclinations in the wake of Mission City had just been the programming settling in. But one thing remained true between the humans and the Cybertronians: when something tried to kill you, you try to kill it back.)

Not that Sam thought it was actually an option where Wheeljack was concerned, since the counterparts clearly had a strong bias against Wheeljack, and neither of them had tried anything. Yet. That Sam knew of. Which he was sure he would, because as far as he could tell, Sideswipe and Sunstreaker were as subtle as a piano dropping out of the sky. Also, somehow everyone came to the conclusion that it was fine that Sam should participate in Wheeljack's newest studies. Supposedly, this was some kind of weapon or tracking device or something that was supposed to help them locate the unknown guy, who apparently had some sort of superhero ability to be _invisible_. Literally. Which was why Sam, Cliffjumper, Sideswipe and Sunstreaker had ended up in a unused lot out of human eyesight to test out his technology. The idea was to be able to trigger some obscure aspect of Cybertronian technobiology without the unknown realizing it. Wheeljack had reasoned his victimology in this way: Two chasebots with extremely sensitive sensor arrays, plus two mechs of average susceptibility, meant that they had all spectrums covered.

Sam, who was actually somewhat of a logical individual if only so that he could BS his way out of every situation he didn't like while sounding somewhat reasonable, figured out that two of each extremes did _not_ count as 'covered' and that Wheeljack was just trying to find _some_ way of experimenting on him. He was not in the least bit excited about this, but at least the counterparts were there. Although they had gotten a little less focused on him since they had other robots to harass now, they still occasionally had his back.

Still, considering their general dislike for Wheeljack, he was a little surprised they willingly agreed to be part of the testing group. Well. Up until he got hit with a few of those strange pulse things and once he got over being deafened by them, he realized he was now very, very tipsy. Contrarily, this also made him less than pleased.

"Is this how Wheeljack tests _everything_ he invents?" Sam asked unhappily while Sideswipe pried him off the ground for the nth time that day.

"Just about," Sideswipe said with the air of someone very drunk and pretending they weren't.

"Oh, that's just about _great_."

Then things really went to hell.

-+-

The All Spark's conversion to a mech hadn't gone the way it had intended, Jazz was sure. Aware as he had been that the All Spark continued to live and that the last container it had inhabited had been Sam -- a Sam who had been a long way toward converting fully to metallic compounds, Jazz had taken the time to familiarize himself with the shape and size of the prototypes. The mech he was looking at didn't match the prototypes but in the most abstract ways, which Jazz figured had to do with him doing it out in the world somewhere instead of in the safety of Ratchet's medbay.

That and he had assumed that without proper materials, the All Spark would have driven the conversion toward the more conservative size, but it seemed content to continue to defy all reaction forecasts.

"(Jazz,)" Optimus sent sternly, "(this is not the time nor the place. _Respond_, Jazz.)"

It had been a bad idea to immediately let everyone know that Sam was alive, obviously. Jazz actually felt a little embarrassed over his reaction, especially considering that immediately afterward, he'd been bombarded by every mech in his squad. Bumblebee had been the first to let up when Jazz continued to refuse to answer their questions, this wasn't because the young mech understood _anything_. Ironhide had been next since he had more investment in getting into contact with the counterparts than he had with Sam. And it was too difficult for Ratchet to continue to communicate through Blaster without giving anything away for him to keep it up.

Which left Prime.

"(Well,)" Jazz sent, finally relenting, "(I'm kinda trying to save my own wires here, Prime.)" He scanned again for any suspicious shapes, but just because he didn't sense them didn't mean they weren't there.

Optimus was exasperated. Jazz could tell, and he didn't need radio signals to know it. "(If you had just provided us with Samuel Witwicky's contact codes immediately, this could have been avoided.)"

Like the Pit it would have been. As far as he could tell, he was the only one perhaps except Sam who knew just what the secret behind his conversion was, and he wasn't going to risk that being revealed just because he suspected he was the only one old enough to actually decipher enough of that Ancient Cybertronian that Sam's programming was written in. He didn't know _for sure_, and it was better not to make any kind of mistake, especially with Wheeljack around.

Luckily, before anyone had caught onto Jazz's strange reaction to the mech in question, the others apparently caught up to whoever it was they were chasing, and the counterparts had been more than happy to have 'Boxy' stay behind with Jazz. After a few initial bombardments as to if everyone was okay since he'd been gone and things like that and having Jazz only absentmindedly respond, Sam had turned his attention back to the counterparts. Probably. He was being too still and quiet for the Sam that Jazz vaguely remembered, and he assumed that it must be because he was in connection with the others of his group.

"(Hey,)" he sent, "(just gimme a minute, okay? Let's not let the baby-bot rush into a situation we're not sure about.)"

Not that Jazz was in the least concerned that there wasn't a personality matrix with the Witwicky kid's whole neurotic profile on it. The conversion might have turned out this spindly mech with more spikes than the average Decepticon, but a sharper, warier Sam was still a Sam. And later. Jazz would think about it _later_, what it meant that the entire frame had been so carefully converted into the typical body style of neutrals common in these vorns ... a whole cast of mechs that Sam couldn't have the first byte of information on.

He scanned on last time for any indication that Bumblebee had managed to track them down and then completely turned his attention to the mech crouching alongside him. "Alright, kid," he said, startling Sam a little. Although his transceiver array had held still at the time, now they began to shift restlessly. And it was still _Sam_'s face, somehow, that the mech was looking at him with -- Jazz hadn't known the kid long, but his visual pattern recognition programs lined up the angles and shapes to the exact image of Sam's face that first night when he looked up at them all. "First thing first. We're going to have to do a quick and dirty translation of your files. Does that make any sense?"

"Actually, yeah," Sam said with not-Sam's voice except that the inflection was exactly right. "My -- my little _ping_ thing. It doesn't make any sense, right?"

"Oh," he said, "it makes sense, but I don't think you want to roll around identifying yourself that way. If I rig up a translation program, do you think you could use it?"

He thought it over for a second -- rather long for a 'Bot, but as Sideswipe told him that Sam had only stopped imprinting a day or so ago, it was still acceptable. "Probably, yeah. I've used programs Prowl wrote up, so it shouldn't be a lot different, right?"

Jazz was momentarily side blinded by that admission. "Prowl," he repeated. "You mean -- oh, yea tall, likes to lecture, with a stick at least this big shoved in his axle?" Forgetting himself for a moment, he said the name of the bot he was indicating and tested it against the human word, and didn't miss the way one of the transceivers ticked up in response to the language. It was possible that someone had translated his name into 'Prowl', although that was a little more ... expressive than the mech usually was.

"Yeah," Sam said with that same young mech curiosity, "at least, I think so. I mean, he had to write his own programs because otherwise he couldn't use them at all, because they shouldn't have worked. Or. Idunno, something like that."

Oh Primus. That _was_ Prowl. "And," he said, "how long did you say you've been rollin' with the bigbot?"

Sam was clearly onto him, which by the things that he had gleaned from the other mechs was something he should have expected. The kid wasn't dumb, and Jazz didn't think that having a processor as massive as a Cybertronian's or as extensive as a chase class mech was really going to change that. Still, he reluctantly said: "not long, really. Just like --" he quickly calculated "-- well, maybe not even a day altogether."

Jazz relaxed. They'd gotten lucky on that one because Prowl caused enough trouble as it was without influencing an imprinter to be just like him. "Well, he hasn't been down here long then, s'ats good," he said, just to throw Sam off the trail. "Anyway, you should be able to use this program."

Not that the program would do a lot of good, but it would translate the outgoing and incoming signals into something that Sam would understand. Jazz didn't have the time or the inclination to attempt a full system translation ... besides, there were few surer ways to prevent a hack than all the files being in a language that wasn't easily decipherable. Install a few firewalls, and he'd be one lucky mech.

"You got that installed?" he asked. When he got the affirmative, he pinged Sam again, since someone had clearly trained him well -- probably Sideswipe. This time, the information came back in clear Cybertronian, identifying Sam as a Chase class mech, ally of the Autobots, but with no identifying tag other than that. "Alright," he said, "that should prevent any further misunderstandings."

"I don't know," Sam said doubtfully. "It didn't teach me Cybertronian or anything like that."

Jazz hummed with amusement. "You don't think we just downloaded English, did ya? We _learned_ it. Besides, Cybertronian is riddled with 'slag' meanings, and definitions that vary from 'bot to 'bot. You'll have to do it the hard way."

"Joy," he said dryly. His transceiver ticked again, and he said: "oh. They got him. Ow. Yes. They caught the guy the counterparts left to go help with."

"Sideswipe's excited?" Jazz inquired, amused. It was like Sideswipe -- even as young mechs, when he and his counterpart had been practically the same mech down to the last code, Sideswipe had been the more boisterous. It had only gotten worse the more they'd gotten around and experienced.

"Kinda, yeah," he said, gently tapping the base of his receivers.

"Well, let's not leave them hangin'," Jazz said, taking a few steps to get clear. He scanned the area one more time before transforming and rolling away to clear some room for Sam. The chasebot followed him easily with the simplistic movements of every young mech who wasn't entirely comfortable with moving with their whole body. The quiet, somber murmur of his ERT shifted into an anxious humming as his sensors went on alert, a flash of light from behind the plates protecting the delicate crisalyn structures -- Sam must have always been emotive, but Jazz hadn't been in a position to appreciate it before now, as his electronic body gave him away.

"(What about the others?)" Sam asked intently, following Jazz as he rolled clear of the human structure. "(You said they were okay -- you said some came with you. Where's Bumblebee? He's here, right?)"

"(We'll be meetin' up with them sooner or later,)" Jazz assured him. "(But until then, let's you and me go provide some interference, alright?)"

"(Sooner or later is great,)" the mech said as his ERT waves increased in frequency. "(Personally, I like sooner -- let's do sooner. Sooner just sounds funner than later, so let's do that one. Like. Now.)"

A little exasperated, Jazz said: "(Alright, we'll do it sooner than later, but first let's go make sure that this whole takin' that bot into custody thing is workin' out.)"

And of all things for Sam to have picked up from anyone, it would be _this one thing_. Because with the sudden burst of speed so typical of the very class he was, he took a step forward and bent toward Jazz, one null striking the ground with unintentional strength and the sharp claws goring the asphalt like it was so much elasyn beneath Silverbolt's blades. "(No, Jazz,)" Sam said, ERT silent while stray electrical pulses rocketed down wires and lit every last light emitting diode in his body, "(No. Jazz, you answer me -- _where's my car_?)"

Jazz supposed that answered just who it was that had taken care of Sam for most of the time that he'd been imprinting. It wasn't that Sam was incapable of having his own temper, since his occasional talks with Bumblebee had proven that much. It had proven that Sam had his own way of letting things build up quietly before he reacted. It was starting to look a lot like he only let you get away with enough that you thought you were safe.

He wasn't inclined in the least bit to try to fight Sam whether he would have and could have knocked the little bot back into his base components -- but Sam didn't seem to agree as far as that went, and Jazz was in his alt mode while Sam very much _wasn't_. That gave the chasebot quiet a bit of an advantage in speed and initiative, and while normally, Jazz would have said he was safe because Sam's basic personality matrix was pretty harmless ... well, that was like saying that he was safe when Bumblebee was getting agitated. The babybot might be basically a good mech, but -- well, he had his moments.

Survival was survival. There was a _reason_ why Prime wouldn't let imprinters fight, and this had _everything_ to do with it, because there was a whole phase of it that Sam had been out there and unprotected for and there was no one who could tell him what kind of subroutines had been written into his hard drive in that time.

_Frag_.

"(At this moment, only the babybot himself could tell you that,)" Jazz sent, making an attempt to create soothing sub frequencies. "(And I wouldn't suggest running into him right now.)"

Sam didn't so much as twitch a gear. "(What are you talking about?)" he sent, and it was beyond obvious that he'd been imprinting off the counterparts, because there was _nothing_ to that transmission but the inquiry itself. Jazz wasn't even sure that it was happening intentionally -- with the counterparts, it was the overcompensation of their social protocol routines, but it was possible this was a helpless mimicry.

"(I'm just sayin',)" he sent. "(You'd better let the shock process out first. We were all operating under the basic assumption that you were dead.)"

There was a squeal of metal as the claw clutching into the ground withdrew. "(But I'm _not_. You told him I'm not, right?)"

"(That's not exactly the problem here,)" Jazz said. "(Come on, man, let's get you back to the others. Prowl's probably at least assumed _some_ responsibility for you if he's writin' programs and lettin' you use them.)"

In a single inelegant but conservative move, the mech stood and circled around to stand in front of Jazz. "Then tell me _what is_ the problem here, Jazz?" he asked intently, breaking the silence. "Why are you -- " he gestured aimlessly in frustration. "Why are you doing _this_ -- whatever this is? _What the hell, Jazz_?"

While not a particularly vain mech, Jazz didn't like having to put effort into maintaining his pigment nanites. Easing backwards, he sent: "(Man, you don't really want to hear this. Just let it go, okay?)"

"(No, Jazz, I don't think that I _am_ going to let it go,)" Sam sent angrily, "(so why don't you just tell me what the hell the problem is?)"

This was _not_ how he wanted this to go. "(Not to be cruel, man,)" he said, "(but the problem is _you_.)"

And he probably shouldn't have said that, but it was done, and Sam fell silent and withdrew. He turned and took a few steps one way and another, but it lacked the natural speed and intention, and as if realizing the same thing he came to a stop. "(Alright,)" he said, making no indication whether it affected him one way or another, "(let's go run interference.)"

-+-

This whole neutral catching thing was clearly the idea of some glitch who didn't know the first thing about making a half decent plan. Whose idea _had_ it been? He briefly searched his memory banks while carefully monitoring the mech beneath his nulls; the program eventually came back the fact that no bot in particular had come up with this idea. Apparently, beyond the general consensus of retrieving the project in question, no plans had been made. It had been himself that suggested hunting the mech, as bored as he had been.

Then Jazz and apparently all the other Autobots had shown up, and Hot Rod had finally cornered the neutral and was calling for backup because he was a slippery glitch, and so they'd headed out. Once they'd actually caught up, the general consensus had seemed to be 'slag the frag out of the glitch' until Hound strongly suggested that wouldn't be the best move considering the facts at hand -- such as Optimus Prime being a handful of miles away and on his way.

In which case, senselessly beating bots of the neutral party would be frowned upon, even if they were hostile ones.

So that was when things took a more Prime Autobot Core turn, and that fragging neutral actually managed to hold his own for a bit. Oh, sure, Hound himself finally managed to pin the glitch and his horror show of Pitawful sensor scrambling radiation display, but not before he knocked Streaker a good one.

... _Primus_. Boxy might have helped him write an entirely too handy human-behavior patch. He checked Sunstreaker out again, but his counterpart was no closer to rebooting. That neutral was just fragged lucky that he knew the point-blank sonic blast to the headplates wasn't actually damaging in any way, shape, or form, or frag what Hound _and_ Prime said, Sideswipe'd reduced his Pitslagged components to _scrap metal_. It might have been fun to find out what reformatted from _that_ mess.

"Sideswipe!"

Speak of the glitch. Sensors snapping to more external affairs, Sideswipe quickly spotted the little mech urgently approaching. There was just something hardwired in him that found the whole sensory array on a speedy bot just absolutely ridiculous, not even factoring in the redundancy of the entire setup. The fact that Boxy had lost what little respectable bulk he had to shaping the array was just corroboration in the multicore.

Boxy arrived on the scene and proceeded to freak out just a little, shifting around and demanding who they should call, and it took a moment before Sideswipe realized what he was glitching over.

"Boxy, slow down," he said, shifting another scan down toward his counterpart. "He's out cold, not hurt."

Boxy seemed ill inclined to believe him, but at least he stopped mincing around like he was going to run off somewhere. Sideswipe had resigned himself to this sort of behavior since it came natural to an Chasebot when their programs all synch'd into a SNAFU mess of trying to assess a danger that their programs couldn't pinpoint to calculate. The orange mech scanned over Sunstreaker himself, as incapable of trusting what he couldn't verify at least with three different sensors as ever.

"You showed up quicker than I thought you would," Sideswipe said. "Jazz went all weird on us for a moment there when he first made contact. I thought for sure he was going to glitch out and hide you for a vorn or two."

"What?" Boxy said blankly, "no. What --?" It was only noticeable because he was shifting around so much, but Boxy stilled for a moment while he centered his visual feed on Sideswipe. Then he skittishly focused away, looking over to the neutral who was pinned to the ground and sitting still, even if what Sideswipe assumed were _natural_ defensive protocols were still fully in action, making it impossible to get a firm fix on him.

"So what are we doing with that guy?" he asked, nodding toward the neutral even as he looked back to Sideswipe.

"Waiting for Prime to decide, of course," Sideswipe said, rising from his counterpart. "You can't really finalize and lock any action courses until Prime approves it, or else you'll regret it."

"Yeah," Boxy said, "right. Sure."

Sideswipe refocused on the chasebot, helplessly clicking with approval. Although he really couldn't have expected Boxy to have any real idea of what Prime _was_ to a mech, or to the Autobots, the fact that Boxy retained his basic chasebot independence was at least somewhat reassuring. At least with all these Autobots around and Boxy's increasingly evident ability to begin looking after himself, the Pull had let up quite a lot. Which was always good, since Sunstreaker got a lot more tolerable so long as Sideswipe wasn't subject to the Pull.

Boxy looked to him again, but before Sideswipe could expand on his approval, Prime rolled up.

Now, Sideswipe kind of understood that he really wasn't in much of a position to say much about alt modes, but he _had_ chosen his as quickly as he possibly could after the unexpected solar winds had scrambled his sensors and made him misjudge the gravity well of the Earth. Oh, sure, he kind of understood what the average human vehicle looked like now, and he understood that he hadn't chosen the best camouflage, but at least he wasn't so gaudy as Hot Rod or Silverbolt. None of them were exactly subtle alt modes. But they also weren't towering, rumbling, chrome-and-fancy-paint-covered work vehicles that Sideswipe had archived as more often than not as pulling trailers. "(Is that Prime? Really?)" he sent Boxy.

"(Yeah,)" Boxy answered, bluntly honest and seemingly completely unaware of what Sideswipe found so incredible. Then again, it had been some while since he'd been around Prime. He was kind of a big deal.

Prime unfolded, and Sideswipe momentarily sympathized with how tightly he must have been compacted. To even fit in these compatible shapes, he and his counterpart had to expand the shell, but then they'd had to do so once again in order to be more comfortable. Once he made it fully standing and all of his parts came to a stop, Prime observed the scene, and Sideswipe did not miss the way that his visual field centered even so briefly on Boxy.

Several bots shifted and there were quite a few visual checks performed as Optimus communicated with them all briefly, before he focused his attention fully on the still mech pinned to the ground. He clicked a query to the neutral, and for a moment, Sideswipe thought that the neut was going to decline a response.

Then, reluctantly, the neutral responded to the query in the same open dialogue format.

"(Wait -- what are they _saying_?)" Boxy asked.

Ah. Right. Boxy lacked the interface software that could decode their open dialogue data exchange. "(Basically,)" he said, listening with one receiver, "(Prime gave his identification and credentials, and requested a collaboration of information -- it's pretty standard stuff when meeting someone you don't know. Jerkface on the ground agreed and disagreed with the information, and now they've both agreed that Hot Rod and his lot were Autobots, were _clearly_ Autobots, and that Jerkface, as a member of the neutral faction, had stalked them and deliberately if not maliciously committed thief, having been aware of the entire civil situation at hand.)" He murmured with exasperation for a moment, saying: "(Boxy, I gotta summarize this, I'm falling way behind. So: Jerkface's pulled a one-eighty, sayin' he'll give up the project without a fight, and allow Prime to take him captive, yadda yadda yadda. Looks like we're gonna have a captive neut around the base.)"

This did not please Sideswipe in the least, and from the sound of it, he wasn't the only one. Which meant he felt totally justified in objecting to the plan at hand, rather loudly.

"Prime," he said, "you've _got_ to be kidding me! Taking this jerkface back to base is the number _one_ bad idea ever! He's a fraggin' _neutral_, Prime!" He gestured toward the mech, who had stopped with his nauseating sensor display within the first few data exchanges with Prime. Although he had the characteristic unidentifiable shell modifications of all Neutrals, he also had design aspects that put him as probably having been activated before war broke out. Sideswipe felt no hesitation in pointing that out, although he knew he wasn't exactly the best judge of things and that therefore, the other's had to know. "He chose a side already! He's a loose fraggin' cannon!"

Prime glanced his way. "I am well aware of your prejudice against neutrals, Sideswipe. It is not necessary to remind me."

"Prejudice --" Sideswipe echoed, surprised to hear it put that way. Of course, it could just have been the human language that did it -- the Cybertronian equivalent was much less 'charged'. "I am not prejudice against neutrals," he protested, gears churning with indignation. He glanced over and pointed at Boxy. "Some of my best friends are neutrals!"

Boxy jerked at the sudden move, shooting him a reproachful look. This somewhat reminded Sideswipe that he was probably acting according to the 'jerk' personality defect, since Boxy identified himself as being an ally these days; he made a gamble and chose to shrug to acknowledge it. It seemed to be the appropriate human response to make, since the mech shook his head but relaxed.

"Frag that," Cliffjumper said heatedly. "Look at this, Prime!" The red mech took a few sharp steps forward and displayed his sensor array, the left which one had a gash. While normally considered cosmetic damage due to the complete lack of liquid loss, the shear amount of obvious circuitry was enough to make Sideswipe wince, and he didn't have anything nearly approaching a sensor array. "Look at the glitch, Prime! You can't say that it happened on accident, he doesn't have the capability for misjudging that way! You can't just let him into the base!"

"You heard his story," Prime said sternly. "We came to an agreement over the matter."

"A human concept!" Silverbolt protested. "And look how well that turns out for them!"

"Stow it, Silverbolt," Hot Rod snapped, his fauxnulls snap-clicking with agitation. "Prime's made his decision."

"A decision that's gonna end badly, and your programming's _glitched_ if you can't process that!" he spat.

"Silverbolt," Prime said sharply, "you've only been on this planet for a few days. Our cooperation and coexistence with the humans has changed our standard operating procedures. Even the Decepticons are unwilling to risk mass exposure after the events of the last battle. Were the humans not here, or had the humans never discovered a method of inflicting injury upon us, it would be different." He nodded at Hound, who lessened his hold on the restraints on the neutral and stepped back to allow the silver mech to rise to his feet. Prime took another moment while the neutral got comfortable to look over the gathered Autobots, but since no one else was protesting in any way other than being disgruntled, he returned his attention to the neutral, informing him to quickly adjust and prepare for their current human-based communication formats.

"(This is fraggin' glitched,)" Cliffjumper snapped. "(Taking a neutral in? I'm not completely scrambled, I know my codes aren't one-hundred, but this doesn't sound right at all.)"

Sideswipe examined the comlink. "(Well, that's kind of Prime's call,)" he offered, "(especially since this is his base with the humans.)"

"(You're kinda relaxed about this,)" Boxy sent dryly. "(What happened to all that loose cannon talk?)"

"(Well,)" Sideswipe said, "(Prime kinda had a point, and you were one, too, right? So he blasted 'Streaker in the face. Only thing hurt is the fragger's pride. Besides, jerkface stood against a handful of Autobots. He's got skills.)"

Boxy looked at him. "(I told you that way back at the NAIAS, you know -- only no one ever listens to me. I mean, really, why listen to the guy that might actually have a frame of reference, huh? It's obviously useless. He's probably -- you know. Wrong. _Jerk_.)"

Cliffjumper blared a huge dismissal at the two of them, clearly disgusted. Sideswipe shrugged again, because he sympathized with the damage done to Cliffjumper's sensor panels, but the mech had vorns and vorns now to decide whether or not he'd wanted them, and he could have gotten them removed if he couldn't handle melee battle with them. So really, it was his own fault.

Prime began to speak again, regaining everyone's attention. "As we have agreed, you are under protective custody, neutral. None of my people will harm you unless you break our agreement."

"Splendid," the neutral said, not sounding relieved or relaxed in any way. "I've adopted this awkward and easily misunderstood culture as per your requirements. Now, please acquiesce to my own and let us go to your headquarters so that you may presumably lock me up and throw away the key." He cast a despairing look around and amended his statement. "I take that back. I fully expect that you will render me offline and cannibalize my systems."

The Autobots collectively began to run a gamut of calculations and system diagnosis in sheer disbelief of what they were hearing. First of all, Sideswipe wasn't very familiar with the workings of an Autobot base, because he and Streaker only came back to visit them every once in a vorn when they either became too damaged to heal on their own, or they wanted to see what kind of weapons Ironhide might be willing to fix them up with. But he was pretty sure that Prime was pulling a lot of pages out of Humanity's book so far, which was odd but so far not outrageous. Although woefully behind technologically, Humanity had a lot of social ideas that weren't strictly unreasonable and that overall agreed with basic Autobot programming -- which Sideswipe did share in, believe it or not. The fact that this neutral still processed should have been a big enough sign of their good will, and the mere fact that he seemed honestly certain that they were going to _cannibalize_ his systems ...

"Well," Boxy said finally. "You got to give the guy some credit. I don't know anyone else who made so many enemies within ten seconds. You were right, Sideswipe. Mech's got skills."

"No," Sideswipe said as he crossed his nulls and shook his head, "I take that all back. Frag the glitch and the wheels he rode in on with the code that supports his basic personality matrix."

Boxy clearly saw the merit in that, since he raised his null and said: "I vote we call this guy Jerkface -- Sideswipe's been doing it, and it's really starting to sound just about right."

Now _that_ was what Sideswipe was talking about; he knew there was a reason why he tolerated the chasebot. Warming up to the idea, he turned to the others and said: "He can be like Boxy! Who really needs a designation when that explains everything right there?"

"Having no actual designation can be the new rage," Boxy agreed.

With a few distasteful clicks, the neutral cut in. "Your witticism is quite astounding," he said. "Tell me -- do you program your processors with that code?"

"Enough," Prime said with disgust.

"Yes," Hound agreed. "There isn't any need to be openly hostile. I'm sure he has a designation anyway. What do your friends call you?"

The silver mech regarded Hound warily, proving that he actually had a memory bank since it was Hound anyway to managed to subdue him, and any of that pacifist facade was just _that _because Hound was nice but he was about as unyielding as the fusion chain of any stellar body. "I don't _have_ 'friends'," the neutral informed them tartly, "but you may refer to me as Mirage."

Sideswipe was so beyond _not_ impressed, and he barely spared the attention to allow the comlink from Boxy. "( ... yeah,)" the chasebot sent, "(surprise? So totally not what I'm feeling right now.)"

Wasting no time, he raised his nulls to gesture. Mimicking the neutral's chosen vocal patterns, he replied: "(My designation is Mirage and I am a lonewolf neutral and all you lowly Autobots are junkware scum, nyah nyah nyah.)"

"( ... right. Real mature, Sideswipe. You haven't been watching tv on the Internet, right?)"

Sideswipe ignored the slightly reproachful query and the mech in general, shooting the neutral a look that went unseen as he grumbled: "(I'll program _your_ processors with my code.)"

"(Wow. So this is what being in a Salvador Dali painting feels like. Good to know.)"

* * *

- OH SAM, YOU ARE ONLY DISCOVERING HOW THE READERS FEEL LIKE ALL THE TIME.

- _The idea was to be able to trigger some obscure aspect of Cybertronian technobiology without the unknown realizing it._ - They nicknamed it the Pregnancy Ray when three months later, Mirage's previously unknown glove box opened to reveal a pair of cute iphones. They were promptly named HTTP and Horizon.

I kinda wrote parts of these chapters on cold medication, yes. I am totally surprised no one ever asked me what Mirage wanted with Wheeljack's wacky invention! SON, I AM DISAPOINT

Also, regarding British Mirage (British SPOCK Mirage, at that), I suspect because I decided the McLaren belongs to 007. Readers suspect I was actually being somewhat logical and was thinking of Brit royalty. 007 OR ARISTOCRACY? You decide! I foresee this becoming awkward when BBB enters the picture, and will totally NOT be impressed. They will have a BRITOFF. Which is like a dance off, but with more scones. 8D

- I LOVE JAZZ. He's got the most fucked up, skewed POV on Sam EVAR. Of course whatever demented and violent reactions Sam has are because of the counterparts! It could never be part of the human DNA programming that was preserved in the transfer! NEVAR! JAZZ WILL NOT HEAR OF IT. COUNTERPARTS ARE TO BLAME. ALWAYS.

- OH GOD WHY AM I SO MEAN TO BBB? Answer: I know it's been a while, but reread the first ten chapters. THIS IS WHAT I DOOOOOO. Also, more terrible things will happen to people, as I have been planning ever since Version 1.0 :3

- Although I'm not sure I ever flat-out said this, I'm saying it now. Radio communications and the Cybertronian language happen liek suppafastdesu. English make it slow down a _lot_, which is why Sideswipe had to switch from a technical translation for Boxy to loosely summarizing it. Radio communications in English take longer, but not as long as walkie-talkie talk cos Cybertronians can actively process faster than the human brain.

- I'm really not digging the way all of this story comes out sounding like I hate Prime. I don't, cos he's one BBMF, but he keeps trying to portray himself as some kind of Paladin/PureHero type and ... haha, no. OH, PRIME. You sacrificed BBB to the humans (or the humans to BBB) in the first movie, and then went completely batcrazy in the second and began destroying your enemies FACES. wot? JUST BE ONE WITH THE BAMF WITHIN, PRIME! Resistance is futile.

- These A/Ns read like _Capslock: The Revenge_. Also, it reads the way my brain sounds. SO YEAH.  
**Reposted as of Mar05 for corrections**


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